Will Omicron Give Us a Break for Christmas and Will the Medical Fraternity Find Common Ground?

Christmas has arrived and Covid-19 is still with us.  The land cries out for mercy after two years of medical crisis on a global scale.  As we prepare for our celebrations, shopping for the ham and turkey is not foremost on our minds. Most of us are thinking about whether we should skip the Christmas family gatherings this year, dress up at home, and make merry all by ourselves.  The deciding factor for many may be whether the Omicron strain of covid-19 arrives on Saint Lucia before 25th December 2021.  God forbid!

2021 has been a year of battles and the field of medicine has proven to be a most dangerous arena, especially because of the COVID 19 conundrum. Whoever you are, you are bound to have been drawn into this battle emotionally and or physically. This battle continues to be waged across state, political, social and economic lines, holding individuals, families, communities, countries and even continents divided and confused, despite claims of scientific posturing.

The scientific world has been bitterly divided, with medical doctors unable to come to a consensus on what is best for society. The arrival of the virus took most of the world by surprise, and the venom and bitterness that continue to emanate from opposing factions has led to the death of thousands.

You are indeed fortunate to be still alive and able to read this paper, and your shout of praise to the Most High God should reach a deafening crescendo, no matter what side of the battle you have been captivated by.

It must be repeated that you are fortunate to be still alive.

Battle lines have been drawn around the origin of the virus, the preferred treatments, the blurring of the responsibilities for government officials and individuals, and the understanding or lack thereof of constitutions, human rights legislation and conventions.

Maybe, you too are confused and want to jump off the controversy, but unfortunately, the time for fence sitting has long passed. You are bound to be partial to at least one of the varied arguments currently making the rounds.

There seem to be doctors who have taken political views, others are aligning with scientific or financial expediency, and others who show genuine concern for the rest of humankind. This is a battle which will not end unless some of the big name players have been forced to acknowledge their wrongs, not just on paper, but by paying their dues to humanity.

In short, somebody has to pay for this debacle.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), has unfortunately been one of the major blameworthy institutions in this war because of a compromised leadership. The current head of the WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom, who is not a medical doctor, has muddy the waters with confusion from the very introduction of the virus.  He has come under heavy criticism because of his refusal to be impartial and to promote a scientific based response.

At one time, Adhanom seemed more bent on the promotion of Chinese propaganda, and has not been able to get the Chinese government to allow impartial inspectors to visit the Wuhan lab where the virus is believed to have been leaked from. He has truly compromised the credibility of the WHO, and has made the world a more dangerous place for all of us. Suspicions have been circulating that he was proposed for the job by the Chinese, and is therefore reluctant or unable to hold them to any degree of transparency.

The Caribbean, which usually depends on the first world for scientific discoveries, finds itself entrapped within the battle lines with the majority of doctors siding with the WHO and its disciples; but a significant number of other practitioners is proclaiming a different song.

There are many doctors around the world who claim to be curing COVID patients with drugs like Hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin and various supplements like zinc, vitamin D3 and Vitamin C.

However, the doctors who are in league with the pharmaceutical industry claim that it is dangerous to use these drugs, and forbid their use for the Corona virus. Ironically, these drugs have been in widespread use against other ailments for years, but the powers that be say that they should not be used against the virus because their efficacy has not been proven and tested.  In response, it could be said that neither has the vaccine efficacy been proven and tested.

TRUST?

The question is, can these arguments be all based on science? If one group has evidence that people have been cured with these medicines, what are the scientific grounds for denying what the cured people are testifying to? The vaccine promoting group seems to be sure that the vaccine is the best thing for humanity, and have not been promoting in any meaningful way, medicines capable of curing the viral infections. With primarily anecdotal evidence available on both sides, can we trust anyone’s word?

Two opposing arguments cannot be scientifically true at the same time, so one of these groups has to be wrong. The first group claims total recovery with medicinal packages, the other promotes the vaccine.

Now, the CDC and FDA have agreed that fully vaccinated people can and do spread the virus among themselves and to the unvaccinated as well. So, if the vaccinated can get and also spread the virus, why should there be vaccine mandates? 

While it is clear that the symptoms of covid-19 are likely to be mild or much less acute for most vaccinated than the unvaccinated, there is no justification for a mandate. Furthermore, separating the vaccinated from the unvaccinated makes no sense since they are both susceptible to contagion and spread.

A study out of Israel has proven that people who have recovered from COVID 19 develop immunity which is 13 times stronger than the protection that vaccinated people get. Most doctors are reluctant to admit this truth because it destroys the arguments for a vaccine mandate.

Both the CDC and the FDA seem to be aware that danger is brewing with the introduction of these vaccine mandates, and so they have quietly, or should we say stealthily changed the meaning of vaccination and a vaccine. Instead of giving immunity as originally described, they both now say that a vaccine is a product introduced into the human body to give protection from a disease rather than to offer immunity against a virus.

But, what about the other vaccines? Will the new definition now apply to them?

There seems to be a certain amount of hypocrisy and hiding of facts among some doctors and health-care practitioners, and the man on the street has been asking ‘why,’ without getting a plausible answer. The state of Uttar Pradesh in India with 250 million people has been declared almost COVID-19 free because of the use of Ivermectin.  Yet doctors in St. Lucia are not allowed to prescribe it to patients, and one has even been fined and delicensed for doing so. Is that a scientific move?

Doctors sometimes admit that they have taken an oath to do no harm to patients, but when medicine is held back from those who can benefit from it, shouldn’t that be considered going against the Hippocratic Oath?

We had thought that the Medical and Dental Council’s disciplinary proceedings against Dr. Gilbertha St. Rose would have resulted in a new conversation on island.  Our hope was that a settlement would have been arrived at where the voices of both sides of the debate would have been heard.  The final result we anticipated was not what we received. 

The two sides hold diametrically opposing views which forces the conclusion that the medical fraternity in Saint Lucia needs to revisit the science.  We insist that a middle ground can be arrived at.  There are different personalities in the mix and varied options available to our population. Saint Lucians want to be free to choose between taking the vaccine and an alternative approach; a policy needs to be developed to support this.

Internationally, the use of booster shots for fully vaccinated people has sparked major controversies in the medical fraternity. Dr. Michael G. Kurilla, an official at the National Institute of Health in the US, and a key member of an advisory panel to the FDA has been quoted as saying “It is unclear that everyone needs to be boosted, other than a subset of the population that clearly would be at high risk for serious disease.” However people like Dr. Anthony Fauci have been proposing not just one or two boosters for everybody, but one every six months.

Luckily, some good sense prevailed and the advisory panel has ruled that young people do not need booster shots. Boosters have been approved for people 65 years and older. Some medical institutions have warned parents repeatedly not to vaccinate children who are under 12 years old, but governments seem hell bent on doing so. Our leaders’ posture convinces populations that science has nothing to do with the mandates, and as a result, protests are fomenting all over the world.

The way things are going, people seem to have already made up their minds to be pro or anti vaccine, and many will not be swayed. There is no middle ground in sight for these warriors, and science is likely to win in the medium to long term, as people are no longer prepared to leave any stone unturned in order to find the truth.

Governments have been inclined to follow the advice of the establishment doctors and their allies, leading to the enforcement of draconian legislation which results in the abuse of human rights.

We need to wake up to the reality that some vaccinated and unvaccinated people will die of covid-19, and some people will die of the vaccine. There is no full proof solution here.  It is for this reason that a vaccine mandate is totally out of place. 

OMICRON

The arrival of the Omicron strain of the virus seems to have gotten some officials salivating for another attempt to control the people under their watch, contrary to science. It is suspected that although the Omicron is more infectious than the other strains, it is a lot milder, and unlikely to end up in death for the average person. However, some governments have wasted no time in calling for another lock down and ubiquitous mask wearing for all age groups.

The new strain is said to be so mild that some doctors are saying that it is equivalent to the flu, and may signal the end of the terror of COVID 19. If this is the case, mankind will be able to return to a pre-pandemic life style. Are you ready for that?

The whole world, minus the manipulators and enslavers is waiting to exhale.

What a collective breath that will be!