Public Health

Analysis of public health, social and public policy including impacts on  economics, open dialog, and social life. Articles on the topic of public health are translated into multiple languages.

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claims lack foundation

Farewell Questions for Rochelle Walensky

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If we would seek to have the agencies of public health act as something other than a marketing arm and apologist for the revolving door of Pharma with whom they seem to so regularly swap staff and sinecure then it must once more be turned to serve the public. It may do so only if it regains the public trust and such trust, once lost, may only be restored by asking the hard questions and diligently following the answers wherever so they may lead until we may understand what went wrong, hold the negligent or malefactors to account, and have the means to prevent this from happening again.

Farewell Questions for Rochelle Walensky Read Journal Article

after covid

After Covid: Twelve Challenges for a Shattered World 

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No question that the administrative bureaucracies would lock down again under the same or new pretext. Yes, they will face more opposition the next time and trust in their wisdom has fallen off a cliff. But the pandemic response also granted them new powers of surveillance, enforcement, and hegemony. The scientism that drove the response informs everything they do. So the next time, it will be harder to restrain them. 

After Covid: Twelve Challenges for a Shattered World  Read Journal Article

competing interests

A Failure to Disclose Competing Interests

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This is a story of an author who promoted COVID-19 vaccine uptake among adolescents while failing to disclose significant competing interests (e.g., his holding of an unrestricted research grant from Pfizer). This is also a story of a failure of the author’s publisher Nature Reviews Cardiology to enforce Nature Portfolio’s declaration-of-competing-interests policy.

A Failure to Disclose Competing Interests Read Journal Article

Prozac

Prozac Is Unsafe and Ineffective for Young People, Analysis Finds

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Antidepressants like fluoxetine double the risk of suicide and aggression in children and adolescentso, they often lead to decreased quality of life, they cause sexual dysfunction in about 50% of users, and these harms may continue long after they try to quit. There seems to be no rationale for using fluoxetine in young people for treating depression – the new analysis concludes the drug is unsafe and ineffective.

Prozac Is Unsafe and Ineffective for Young People, Analysis Finds Read Journal Article

medical ethics

The Four Pillars of Medical Ethics Were Destroyed in the Covid Response

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Individual patients can and must affect change. They must replace the betrayed trust they once held in the public health establishment and the healthcare industry with a critical, caveat emptor, consumer-based approach to their health care. If physicians were ever inherently trustworthy, the COVID era has shown that they no longer are so.

The Four Pillars of Medical Ethics Were Destroyed in the Covid Response Read Journal Article

lost knowledge

The Problem of Lost Knowledge: Antibiotic Edition 

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All of this adds up to a grim picture of mass but often preventable deaths, all because the system did not work to incorporate the previously existing wisdom we learned from a century earlier. We needed merely to rely on the known information gathered from previous periods of history. The system utterly failed and for reasons having to do with regulatory capture and mass panic. Instead, they embarked on a population-wide experiment that created an unfathomable amount of suffering. And they still haven’t admitted it. 

The Problem of Lost Knowledge: Antibiotic Edition  Read Journal Article

fear of a microbial planet

A Short History of Long Covid

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Another strange post-COVID symptom—dubbed COVID toes—gained notoriety when NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers joked about his broken toe being a result of his recent bout with COVID. Not surprisingly, media outlets took it seriously, with articles appearing all over U.S. media. Rodgers later had to clarify that it was only a broken toe, and not COVID-related.

A Short History of Long Covid Read Journal Article

pandemic response history

15 Days Finally Ends After 1,141 Days

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These days and for many months and years following, all the people involved in the pandemic response – not only government officials but media mouthpieces and Big Tech accomplices – will be rewriting history and hoping that everyone will forget the real history. They are trying to avoid accountability and save whatever vestiges of despotism that they can, while hoping to institutionalize the powers that made all of this possible. They cannot be allowed to win this struggle for essential rights, liberties, and truth. 

15 Days Finally Ends After 1,141 Days Read Journal Article

Denmark

Lockdowns and Vaccines: Lessons from Denmark

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If the vaccines were highly effective against death, why was excess mortality in Denmark so much higher than in the previous flu year? Why was it so much higher than excess mortality in Sweden in the first pandemic year — without vaccines — when the virus was much more virulent than Omicron? Unlike Sweden, there was no “mortality deficit” to account for.

Lockdowns and Vaccines: Lessons from Denmark Read Journal Article