Columns

Column #281

If you aim to eat a healthy diet based on the belief, you are what you eat, you are in a minority. If you understand food chemistry and eat grass-fed and Omega-3 meats with a goal of optimizing your health, you are in a tiny minority. If you understand the science behind the Omega-6 to Omega-3 fatty acid (EFA) ratio, and focus on maintaining a low ratio, you are in a minuscule minority.

This past Monday (Jan 11, 2021) a lady on NPR was discussing the best way to stop civil unrest. Her solution was that we need to banish all commentary that isn’t truthful. That way there can’t be any disagreements. This week another lady sent me an email explaining how the ignorant mob only talks about their ridiculous “religious distractions, gun diversions and ‘fear and loathing’ while laughing all the way to bank, abandoning the country’s infrastructure, healthcare, education, environment, democracy and future to a funeral pyre of cheap tax cuts.” Yep, that was her “truth.”

Column #280

The insanity of shutdowns is over the top. A new working paper, by authors at Duke University, Harvard Medical School, and the Johns Hopkins University business school, indicates that “over the next 20 years, 1.37 million more people will die than would have died without the unemployment shock the pandemic caused.” That’s in an article by “Fortune” magazine. The toll on small businesses is a perfect example of why.¹

Small businesses range in age from new startups to centuries old. Many are just individuals working as house cleaners, musicians, dog sitters, bookkeepers, commercial fishermen, farmers, programmers, consultants, mechanics, and more since the skills of the self-employed are limitless.

Column #279

Watching the sun rise up over the Atlantic Ocean is often an inspiring experience. Yet in spite of its majestic beauty, it’s not a perfect indication for how the new day will unfold. Unknowns may catch us off-guard. Just the same though, most of us are confident we can control our own personal outcomes by sticking with the good habits that got us to where we are today.

To move beyond the current status many people develop wishful hopes and dreams. Compare that to people who not only have hopes and dreams but are also focused on goals with well-thought out plans for achieving them. Obviously, just having hopes and dreams, which the majority embraces, yields little fruit. It’s the second approach that creates life’s greatest successes. So, as you look ahead, what are your goals and plans for achieving them?

Column #278

There’s been a debate for some months now about how long immunity lasts after an actual COVID-19 infection versus the vaccine. Of course, some folks say it’s much better to gain immunity through a vaccine because the virus kills. But even the vaccine has caused some negative reactions and I’ve heard that, in some hospitals, about half of the employees take a pass on the shot for now.

About 90% of the COVID-19-associated deaths are concentrated in just 9% of the population. That’s the folks over 70, particularly those with multiple chronic conditions. Their case fatality rate is 5.4%. The 50 to 69 group has a very low 0.5% fatality rate. The 20 to 49 population has a 0.02% fatality rate. The fatality rate for the zero to 19 group is an infinitesimally small 0.003%, which is less than influenza. It’s very obvious who is most vulnerable and needs the vaccine first. It’s just as obvious that 91% of the population should not be locked down at all.

Column #277

When it comes to healing there’s more than one approach. Treating severe accident victims usually requires drugs and operations. Poisonings usually require mostly drugs. Viral, fungal, and bacterial infections involve drugs and possibly minor operations. Chronic disease emergencies (chronic conditions that have reached a terminal stage) often require drugs and operations. The majority of chronic diseases are treated with drugs.

It’s no wonder then that the medical field is hooked on drugs and operations for treating everything that comes along. It’s even that way in preventing disease. Of course the medical field doesn’t actively work on eliminating accidents nor similar activities. But it does prescribe numerous vaccines for viral infections and even a few for warding off bacteria. But the industry’s big money maker is in treating chronic diseases and, when those diseases start to show minor symptoms, doctors usually prescribe a drug or two to slow things down.¹

Column #276

I’ve been hearing about false positives for months. Recently, even the state of Florida ordered testing labs to provide additional information to possibly separate the wheat from the chaff. Officially, Florida wonders if the number of reported cases actually represents what is going on. To help answer its question it wants to know the “cycle threshold” (Ct value) of each test.^{1 2}

For an explanation of what Ct value means for testing integrity, I turned to Sebastian Rushworth M.D. He’s a practicing physician in Stockholm, Sweden, the country that ignored COVID-19 lockdowns. He has a relatively famous blog where he shares evidence-based information about health and medicine, his clinical experiences with COVID-19, and what is known about the virus.³

Column #275

For decades Heart Disease has been our nation’s number one killer and, as such, it makes COVID-19 look like a walk in the park. But this question just came up: Are the best approaches for strengthening the immune system useless for preventing heart disease?¹

The CDC tells us that 94% of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 are people who have multiple pre-existing conditions that include:

Column #274

I like to follow science, but this year politicians, the MSM, and social media giants discredited that slogan by narrowing the national conversation, cherry picking theories, and only mentioning science-based reports that support their unified narrative.¹

We can’t just take one scientific fact in isolation and go with it. That’s true for our personal health as well as for the COVID-19 pandemic. The nutritional chemistry our bodies require is so incredibly complex the best we can do to match our nutritional needs is to eat the foods mankind mostly ate before inventing agriculture. The science involving the many aspects of dealing with COVID-19 is also complex and can be similar to randomly throwing a thousand darts. Standing alone each factual scientific dart may make sense. But taken in the context of all of our society’s many variables, many of the “darts” become cumbersome, useless, wrong, ridiculous, and even destructive.

Column #273

Chinese author Wan Quan made the first reference to a smallpox inoculation in his “Douzhen xinfa” published in 1549. The first modern smallpox vaccine was developed in 1796. These developments were really big advancements because smallpox had about a 30% fatality rate. Because of vaccinations, smallpox was eventually eradicated and the vaccine is no longer administered. Interestingly, the World Health Organization has posted a report by John Ioannidis that projects the COVID-19 fatality rate to be 0.23%.^{1 2}

During the twentieth century a wide variety of vaccines for viruses were developed and improved upon. To this day advancements are proceeding, but the special urgency caused by COVID-19 has ramped up development significantly. The urgent need for vaccines prompted an international response that had more than 120 candidate SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in development by June of 2020. The first ones to gain the most attention rounding the bend for the homestretch were the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Their success has caused considerable excitement and a little controversy at the same time.

Column #272

Sometime back I ran across the “Meat Myth Crushers” website. It has numerous short videos and essays that address many of the myths swirling around meat. The site is well worth a visit and I’m sure you’ll find some topics of interest.¹

They have about 60 myth crushing presentations. For instance:●   Meat Rots in Your Digestive System●   Processed Meat is Unhealthy and Should Be Avoided●   Meat Is the Only Product from Animals Raised for Food●   'Glue' is Used to Hold Some Meat Together●   Livestock Have a Greater Negative Environmental Impact than Cars●   Hormone Use In Poultry Production Poses a Health Risk to Consumers