SAFE VACCINES FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASES ARE LIKE CHICKEN SOUP FOR CANCER--POSSIBLY HELPFUL, BUT...
(this is the real problem with the nation's top doc, whom the media always refer to as "the nation's leading expert on infectious diseases," and whom I cannot refer to by name on social media due to you know what. )
May 12, 2020
[Also see "Covid-19: Science & Values"]
This article is about why "top doc"--despite his well deserved (I'm assuming for the sake of argument at least that it is well deserved) reputation as a top-notch scientist in the field of vaccines and infectious diseases, and despite his service (for relatively modest pay compared to the fortunes that corrupt politicians acquire) as the Director of the National Institute of you-know-what since 1984, and despite his advocacy lately for sensible social distancing (stay at home, masks, etc.) policies to reduce the number of lives lost or harmed by covid-19--is not our friend. This accusation will no doubt shock and bewilder many people. But please hear me out.
The reason I say top toc is not our friend is this. Top doc is the person on whom the billionaire ruling plutocracy has relied, for many decades and especially now during the covid-19 pandemic, to cover up and distract the public from the fact that the ruling billionaire plutocracy has been inflicting on the general U.S. public enormous and unnecessary suffering--serious illnesses and shorter life spans.
Top doc has been serving, essentially, as a very sophisticed public relations expert to protect the reputation of a billionaire upper class that deserves to have its reputation dragged through the mud. The way that top doc serves the billionaire ruling plutocracy this way is by doing two things:
-
Promoting the idea that the only way to protect people from infectious diseases and illnesses such as asthma is by using vaccines and drugs;
-
Being silent about the fact that by far the MOST (as will be shown below in the section "What's the Evidence?") effective way to protect people from infectious and other very serious diseases is by ensuring that people live in a safe (unpolluted, sanitary) environment and have good nutritious food and don't have the chronic stress that is induced by being treated like dirt by a ruling billionaire upper class--an upper class that makes people live in an extremely unhealthful and disease-promoting environment.
What top doc does is as morally wrong as a physician prescribing chicken soup for a patient with cancer while never even mentioning (never mind prescribing) a well known and FAR more effective treatment for the cancer. Prescribing chicken soup is not a bad thing and may even provide some benefit. The bad--indeed evil--thing is remaining silent about the far more effective treatment.
Likewise, it is not a bad thing for top doc to do his scientific research into vaccines and drugs to protect against infectious diseases, and these things may even (in some cases) provide some real benefit. [Read about why vaccines are, however, far more problematic and sometimes dangerous, despite the way mass media and government authorities tell us "don't worry, they are perfectly safe and effective," in the section below titled "Some Problems with Vaccines.] The not-our-friend thing that top doc does is, from his very lofty and influential position as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, remaining absolutely silent about the FAR more effective way to protect the public from dangerous allergies and infectious diseases.
Why does top doc remain silent about the most effective way to protect against the diseases that he has supposedly devoted his career to protecting us against?
The answer is that top doc knows that the MOST effective "treatment" for these diseases is exactly what the ruling billionaire plutocracy does NOT want used, and he wants to remain on good terms with the billionaires, whom he hob-nobs with routinely. As top doc knows, the MOST effective "treatment" entails abolishing class inequality and hence removing from power his billionaire buddies, people like Bill Gates (read the sordid truth about him here) and the others. The reason ordinary people lack a healthful environment (which is the MOST effective treatment) is solely because the billionaire upper class, in order to maintain the economic class inequality that makes its existence as an obscenely wealthy and privileged and powerful elite possible, must treat ordinary people like dirt--and making them live in an unhealthful environment is a key part of that, as I discuss in great detail in the article previously linked to in this sentence.
The billionaire upper class is loath to permit the MOST effective "treatment" to be implemented, and top doc is therefore loath to even hint to the public what the MOST effective treatment actually is. It is only top doc's silence about the most effective "treatment" that enables him to remain so famous and influential; as soon as he began speaking the truth he would be removed from office and no longer interviewed by the mass media, and he surely knows it.
Top doc obtained great fame and praise from powerful people in exchange for protecting the reputations of those powerful people--the very people who need to be removed from power if we're going to have a truly healthful society. Top doc has made a deal with the devil, a quid pro quo, and it's a very not-our-friend one. Top doc is no ordinary scientist just "doing his job" with no real power in society. He is a scientist whom the ruling billionaire plutocracy depends on to make them look like they're truly concerned about the welfare of the public, when they are not.
If top doc wanted to do the morally right thing, he would speak the truth to the world and let the chips fall where they may. Even if he were fired by Trump and lost his position as Director of the you-know-what, he would still be a very famous and highly respected scientist who could gain at least some attention for the truth he would tell. Indeed, Top doc's reputation would rise in the opinion of many good people if he were fired for speaking the truth. He could play a very positive role, more perhaps than any other scientist. But no, he'd rather stay mum on the truth and enjoy his good standing in the eyes of his billionaire buddies.
Top Doc Helps Make Sure We DON'T End the Covid-19 Pandemic Quickly
If top doc were truly acting in the interest of protecting public health, then he would be shouting to the rafters (even as just a private citizen if Trump fired him) that it is class inequality that is preventing the appropriate social distancing (stay at home policies, etc.) from ending the covid-19 pandemic in the United States as fast as possible. Here's what I mean.
Clearly, as top doc and virtually everybody else knows, the pressure on state governments to immediately "end the lockdown" (before it is advisable to do so, and despite the fact that this will lead to more deaths and serious medical harm to "survivors" than otherwise necessary) is largely due to the fact that non-essential workers and small business owners who have been deprived of their income and who still need to pay the rent or the mortgage and feed their children, etc., have not received sufficient money from the federal government to live without their old work income.
As top doc knows, the failure of the government to provide this required money to the non-essential workers and small business owners is thus the main obstacle to ending the pandemic in the U.S. quickly. But as top doc also knows, the ruling plutocracy is loath to provide this money to the non-essential workers because it would amount to implementing a policy that reflects the egalitarian principle of "From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to need or reasonable desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need," and--as top doc also knows--this principle challenges the authority and the very existence of the billionaire plutocracy that rules the country.
And so, in order to remain on good terms with his billionaire buddies, top doc is ALSO loath to advocate that the government needs to provide the non-essential workers (and small business owners) the money they need to live reasonably (and keep their business alive for the future) while staying at home, even though he knows this is what is necessary to actually achieve the maximum possible social distancing required to end the pandemic in the U.S. as fast as possible. Top doc's silence on this question, and his decades of silence on the more general fact that class inequality is the main reason people get sick and die from infectious diseases and other causes (see details below), is the reason that he has been elevated by the billionaire ruling plutocracy to be the "nation's highest authority on infectious diseases."
WHAT'S THE EVIDENCE?
What follows here are quotations mostly from scholarly journal articles and some summarizing such articles. The message from these scholarly sources is overwhelmingly that a healthful environment is the MOST effective way to protect people from infectious diseases and other illnesses. The reason we don't live in such a healthful environment but, on the contrary, in an environment that makes us very susceptible to diseases, is because the billionaire upper class needs to treat us like dirt (as discussed in great detail here) and in so-doing makes us live in an environment that is dangerous (as shown below in detail) in many different ways.
It Was Not Vaccines and Antibiotics that Did the Heavy Lifting to Dramatically Reduce Mortality in Past Centuries
The most important thing responsible for the dramatic decline in mortality from infectious diseases in the last centuries was NOT vaccines and it was NOT antibiotics; it was improved sanitation (such as flush toilets) and improved nutrition. Mortality from these formerly high fatality diseases was extremely low (following big improvements in sanitation and nutrition) by the time vaccines and antibiotics were subsequently introduced. This is not a controversial fact. I was taught it by the Harvard School of Public Health. Read a book length discusion of this.
A 1980 article in the journal Schweiz Med Wochenschr. titled, "Mortality trends in Switzerland. 2. Infectious diseases 1876-1977," stated:
"An analysis has been made of the evolution in Switzerland of mortality due to the main infectious diseases ever since causes of death began to be registered. Mortality due to tuberculosis, diphtheria, scarlet fever, whooping cough, measles, typhoid, puerperal fever and infant gastro-enteritis started to fall long before the introduction of immunization and/or antibiotics. This decline was probably due to a great extent to various factors linked to the steady rise in the standard of living: qualitative and quantitative improvements in nutrition; better public and personal hygiene; better housing and working conditions and improvements in education."
The same article also added: "Immunization has probably been decisive in the eradication of smallpox and poliomyelitis and for the reduction in mortality from tetanus. The introduction of sulfonamides and antibiotics was associated with the beginning of the decline in mortality from non-meningococcal meningitis, otitis and appendicitis and with a more pronounced decline in mortality from pneumonia and acute rheumatic fever. Finally, mortality from syphilis started to decline a few years after the introduction of Salvarsan."
A Journal of Population Studies article titled, "Reasons for the decline of mortality in England and Wales during the nineteenth century" found:
"Five diseases or disease groups accounted for almost the whole of the reduction in mortality between 1851–60 and 1891–1900: tuberculosis (all forms), 47.2 per cent; typhus, enteric fever and simple continued fever, 22.9 per cent; scarlet fever, 20.3 per cent; diarrhoea, dysentery and cholera, 8.9 per cent; and smallpox, 6.1 per cent. In order of their relative Importance the Influences responsible for the decline were: (a) a rising standard of living, of which the most significant feature was improved diet (responsible mainly for the decline of tuberculosis, and less certainly, and to a lesser extent, of typhus); (b) the hygienic changes introduced by the sanitary reformers (responsible for the decline of the typhus-typhoid and cholera groups); and (c) a favourable trend In the relationship between infectious agent and human host (which accounted for the decline of mortality from scarlet fever, and may have contributed to that from tuberculosis, typhus and cholera). The effect of therapy was restricted to smallpox and hence had only a trivial effect on the total reduction of the death rate."
A 1977 Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, Health and Society journal article titled, "The Questionable Contribution of Medical Measures to the Decline of Mortality in the United States in the Twentieth Century" concludes:
"Conclusions
Without claiming they are definitive findings, and eschewing pretentions to an analysis as sophisticated as McKeown’s [an author of the article cited above --J.S.] for England and Wales, one can reasonably draw the following conclusions from the analysis presented in this paper: In general, medical measures (both chemotherapeutic and prophylactic) appear to have contributed little to the overall decline inmortality in the United States since about 1900—having in many instances been introduced several decades after a marked declinehad already set in and having no detectable influence in most instances. More specifically, with reference to those five conditions (influenza, pneumonia, diphtheria, whooping cough, and poliomyelitis) for which the decline in mortality appears substantial after the point of intervention—and on the unlikely assumption that all of this decline is attributable to the intervention— it is estimated that at most 3.5 percent o f the total decline in mortality since 1900 could be ascribed to medical measures introduced for the diseases considered here."
A 2019 article in the Journal The History of the Family states:
"The decline of mortality
The interpretation of the causes of mortality decline has long been contentious. During the first half of the twentieth century, British historians and economists often argued that a large part of the decline should be credited to improvements in medical provision. For example, John Plumb (1950, p. 78) claimed that the decline in the death rate after circa 1740 was ‘almost entirely due to improved midwifery … and the foundation of lying-in hospitals’, whilst John Hicks (1942, p. 43) attributed it ‘beyond all doubt’ to ‘the improvements in sanitation and medical skill which were beginning to be effective in northern Europe by the middle of the eighteenth century’.2 However, although some writers have recently sought to revive the claims made on behalf of medical intervention, most observers now believe that the primary responsibility for improvements in mortality lies with some combination of improvements in diet and nutrition, housing, and sanitary intervention (see e.g. Johansson, 2010; Van Poppel et al., 2016)."
This article in 2020, titled "How sanitation conquered disease long before vaccines or antibiotics," provides many graphs of mortality for various causes over time and in various nations so that one can easily see how mortality was falling dramatically before the use of antibiotics or vaccines. The author summarizes the data thus:
"The bottom line is that sanitation—pest control, water filtration and chlorination, safe sewage disposal, milk pasteurization and other food safety, and public education about general hygiene—probably did more than anything else to reduce mortality rates, if only because these techniques were available decades, and in some cases centuries, before anything else. Antibiotics were dramatically effective when they were finally introduced, but by this point a lot of the work had already been done. Vaccines too were extremely effective, but merely delivered the coup de grace for many diseases."
(The reason there was improved sanitation and nutrition was because good people fought for it and in particular they made it clear to the public that if the ruling class did not make these improvements it would show that the ruling class was lying big time when it claimed to act in the interest of the welfare of the public. Ruling classes know that if they are perceived as enemies of the public welfare they will lose the minimum amount of credibility they require to remain in power. This is why, for example, even Hitler had to end the euthanasia program in response to extreme public anger at it when the public discovered its existence.)
Class inequality--a wealthy upper class treating ordinary people like dirt (as discussed in detail here)--causes us to suffer from chronic stress, poor nutrition, exposure to toxic pollution, overcrowded living conditions, etc., all of which make us sicker and live shorter lives.
A website of The American Institute of Stress gives the results of numerous surveys and studies about stress on the job. Stress is essentially another word for the lack of what academics sometimes call a "sense of coherence," described below. Stress (low sense of coherence) is shown below to be medically very harmful. Here are some of the facts about how prevalent and serious stress on the job is:
Highlighted statistics from the report:
-
40% of workers reported their job was very or extremely stressful
-
25% view their jobs as the number one stressor in their lives
-
75% of employees believe that workers have more on-the-job stress than a generation ago
-
29% of workers felt quite a bit or extremely stressed at work
-
26% of workers said they were “often or very often burned out or stressed by their work
-
Job stress is more strongly associated with health complaints than financial or family problems
Highlighted statistics from the report:
-
80% of workers feel stress on the job, nearly half say they need help in learning how to manage stress and 42% say their coworkers need such help
-
25% have felt like screaming or shouting because of job stress, 10% are concerned about an individual at work they fear could become violent
-
14% of respondents had felt like striking a coworker in the past year, but didn’t
-
9% are aware of an assault or violent act in their workplace and 18% had experienced some sort of threat or verbal intimidation in the past year
Academics use the term "coherence" to refer to things that people want to be true about their environment but which, for ordinary people, are absent in our society based on class inequality with the important decisions in our lives made undemocratically by the upper class and for the benefit of the upper class at our expense. Coherence for ordinary people requires an egalitarian society in which ordinary people have the real power and shape all of society including on-the-job by their values of equaity and mutual aid. Here is the academic way of defining "sense of coherence" aka "SOC":
"The sense of coherence (SOC) concept, which is based on the salutogenic model, has attracted research attention in the population health field. One’s SOC is believed to express the extent to which they have a persistent, enduring but dynamic feeling of confidence that: (1) the stimuli deriving from their internal and external environments in the course of living are structured, predictable, and explicable (comprehensibility); (2) resources are available to them to meet the demands posed by these stimuli (manageability); and (3) such demands are challenges, worthy of investment and engagement (meaningfulness)." [from BMC Research Notes]
This lack of coherence in our lives is medically very harmful:
"After adjustment for socioeconomic position, occupation-based high job strain was associated with higher mortality in the presence of a weak sense of coherence (HR, 3.15; 1.62-6.13), a result that was stronger in women (HR, 4.48; 1.64-12.26) than in men (HR, 2.90; 1.12-7.49). Self-reported passive jobs were associated with higher mortality in the presence of a weak sense of coherence in men (HR, 2.76; 1.16-6.59)." [ The European Journal of Public Health]
"Highlights
• We examined the association of Sense of Coherence (SOC) with 22-year all-cause mortality.
• Sense of Coherence was inversely associated with all-cause mortality during 22 years.
• The association was independent of sociodemographic factors and prevalent disease.
• Strong SOC was associated with 35% lower mortality hazard relative to weak SOC."
[from Journal of Psychomatic Research]
"A weak SOC, as compared with an intermediate SOC, was associated with a higher all-cause mortality risk after, on average, 13.5 years of follow-up and adjusted for sex and age (HR=1.40, 95% CI 1.14 to 1.70). After additional adjustments, the higher all-cause mortality risk remained statistically significant (HR=1.27, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.59). Mortality risk for the strong SOC group did not differ from that for the intermediate group.
"Conclusions A weak SOC was associated with a higher risk of all-cause mortality. Health promotion focusing on strengthening SOC may be a promising new strategy, potentially affecting not only mental health but also mortality." [from Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health]
"We identified 102 633 individuals with 1 423 753 person-years at risk (mean follow-up 13·9 years [SD 3·9]), of whom 3441 had prevalent cardiometabolic disease at baseline and 3841 died during follow-up. In men with cardiometabolic disease, age-standardised mortality rates were substantially higher in people with job strain (149·8 per 10 000 person-years) than in those without (97·7 per 10 000 person-years; mortality difference 52·1 per 10 000 person-years; multivariable-adjusted hazard ratio [HR] 1·68, 95% CI 1·19–2·35). This mortality difference for job strain was almost as great as that for current smoking versus former smoking (78·1 per 10 000 person-years) and greater than those due to hypertension, high total cholesterol concentration, obesity, physical inactivity, and high alcohol consumption relative to the corresponding lower risk groups (mortality difference 5·9–44·0 per 10 000 person-years). Excess mortality associated with job strain was also noted in men with cardiometabolic disease who had achieved treatment targets, including groups with a healthy lifestyle (HR 2·01, 95% CI 1·18–3·43) and those with normal blood pressure and no dyslipidaemia (6·17, 1·74–21·9)" [from The Lancet: Diabetes & Endocrinology]
"In general, exposure to psychosocial job stress (high job demands, low job control, high job strain, job dissatisfaction, high effort–reward imbalance, overcommitment, burnout, unemployment, organizational downsizing, economic recession) had a measurable impact on immune parameters (reduced NK cell activity, NK and T cell subsets, CD4+/CD8+ ratio, and increased inflammatory markers). The evidence supports that psychosocial job stresses are related to disrupted immune responses but further research is needed to demonstrate cause–effect relationships." [from Psychoneuroimmunology]
The following study identifies CHRONIC stress as detrimental. Class inequality creates chronic stress.
"Conclusion
Sapolsky (1998) wrote,
Stress-related disease emerges, predominantly, out of the fact that we so often activate a physiological system that has evolved for responding to acute physical emergencies, but we turn it on for months on end, worrying about mortgages, relationships, and promotions. (p. 7)
The results of this meta-analysis support this assertion in one sense: Stressors with the temporal parameters of the fight-or-flight situations faced by humans’ evolutionary ancestors elicited potentially beneficial changes in the immune system. The more a stres-sor deviated from those parameters by becoming more chronic, however, the more components of the immune system were affected in a potentially detrimental way." [from American Psychological Association: Psychological Bulletin]
The following is from an article summarizing scientific studies:
"DOES STRESS TAKE A TOLL ON YOUR BODY?
The answer is yes, in some cases. If you experience chronic stress, the same chemicals produced to prepare your body to response keep going for longer periods of time and can impede other bodily functions including weakening your immune system and preventing your digestive, excretory and reproductive systems from working as they should. Chronic stress can lead to sleep and digestive issues, headaches and body aches, depression and irritability, just to name a few potential issues.
According to the Center for Disease Control/National Institute on Occupational Safety & Health, the workplace is the number one cause of life stress. The American Institute of Stress reports 120,000 people die every year as a direct result of work-related stress. Additionally, healthcare costs resulting from work-related stress totals an average of $190 billion a year. [Emphasis added--J.S.]
The NIH says continued strain on your body from routine stress is often the hardest to detect but could lead to serious health problems such as:
-
Heart disease
-
High blood pressure
-
Diabetes
-
Depression
-
Anxiety disorder
-
Other illnesses
Chronic stress is linked to six leading causes of death including heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver and suicide, according to the American Psychological Association."
Why Our Immune Systems Are Not Up To Par
Many Americans live in places where there is a lot of toxic pollution (not the billionaires, of course!) Read about this in item #15 at https://www.pdrboston.org/why-no-rich-no-poor. Let's see how this affects our immune system.
"Environmental toxins impair immune system over multiple generations. New research shows that maternal exposure to a common and ubiquitous form of industrial pollution can harm the immune system of offspring and that this injury is passed along to subsequent generations, weakening the body's defenses against infections such as the influenza virus." [from ScienceDaily]
"Air Pollution May Increase Mortality Risk in Heart Transplant Patients: Heart transplant recipients who live in areas where particulate matter air pollution levels reached above national limits for clean air had a 26 percent higher risk of mortality due to infection, according to a study published Dec. 9 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology." [from American College of Cardiology]
"Is air pollution making the coronavirus pandemic even more deadly?
Dirty air is well known to worsen the heart and lung risk factors for Covid-19 - early research is cause for concern...And decades of gold standard research have shown air pollution damages hearts and lungs.
So is dirty air, which already kills at least 7 million people a year, turbo-charging the coronavirus pandemic?
The overlap of highly polluted places, such as northern Italy, and pandemic hotspots is stark and preliminary studies point in this direction, while a link between the 2003 Sars outbreak and dirty air is already known." [from The Guardian]
"Air pollution alters immune function, worsens asthma symptoms:
"Exposure to dirty air is linked to decreased function of a gene that appears to increase the severity of asthma in children, according to a joint study by researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley.
"While air pollution is known to be a source of immediate inflammation, this new study provides one of the first pieces of direct evidence that explains how some ambient air pollutants could have long-term effects.
"Researchers have linked exposure to dirty air to changes in a gene that, in turn, is connected to more severe asthma symptoms.
"The findings, published in the October 2010 issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, come from a study of 181 children with and without asthma in the California cities of Fresno and Palo Alto.
"The researchers found that air pollution exposure suppressed the immune system’s regulatory T cells (Treg), and that the decreased level of Treg function was linked to greater severity of asthma symptoms and lower lung capacity. Treg cells are responsible for putting the brakes on the immune system so that it doesn’t react to non-pathogenic substances in the body that are associated with allergy and asthma. When Treg function is low, the cells fail to block the inflammatory responses that are the hallmark of asthma symptoms." [from UC Berkeley News]
"Air pollution can enhance T helper lymphocyte type 2 (Th2) and T helper lymphocyte type 17 (Th17) adaptive immune responses, as seen in allergy and asthma, and dysregulate anti-viral immune responses. The clinical effects of air pollution, in particular the known association between elevated ambient pollution and exacerbations of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), are consistent with these identified immunological mechanisms." [from Free Radic Biol Med]
Research from the University of Rochester suggests why flu season hits some harder than others:
Researchers at the University of Rochester said that they have found links between environmental toxins and weakened immune systems that get passed down from generation to generation.
Paige Lawrence, who runs a lab in the environmental medicine department at the University of Rochester, said the results of the study, published this month in the journal iScience, could help explain why some people are more vulnerable to the flu than others." [from WRVO Public Media]
Poor Nutrition Is Deadly
Many Americans (not the billionaires, of course!) lack good nutritious food (fruits and vegetables for example) because they live in "food deserts" where there are no nearby stores selling nutritious food but only fast-food restaurants (not to mention that many people have to go without good food in order to pay the rent or the payment on the car they need to drive to work or a hospital bill they couldn't afford good insurance for--problems caused by the class inequality that Dr. Fauci's billionaire buddies enforce). This poor nutrition leads to obesity and excess salt consumption, which--as shown below--have terrible health consequences.
"Obesity does not happen overnight. It develops gradually over time, as a result of poor diet and lifestyle choices, such as:
-
eating large amounts of processed or fast food – that's high in fat and sugar " [from the National Health Service UK]
Fast food also causes us to consume too much salt (sodium).
"CDC: 90% of Americans consume too much salt
"Nine in ten Americans consume more than the recommended limits for sodium – which mostly comes from salt in the diet – an excess of which leads to high blood pressure, raising the risk of cardiovascular diseases, including heart attack and stroke...The Dietary Guidelines – revised every 5 years – are based on the latest scientific evidence, which Dr. Frieden says clearly shows “too much sodium in our foods leads to high blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke.”
"Around 1 in 3 adult Americans – around 70 million people – have high blood pressure and only half of them have it under control.
"Heart disease and stroke kill more Americans every year than any other cause. Together with other cardiovascular diseases, they claim more than 800,000 lives each year in the US and cost the nation nearly $320 billion a year in health care and lost productivity.
"Need to reduce sodium in manufactured and restaurant foods:
"While one way to cut back on sodium is to go easy on the salt shaker, most of the sodium that Americans consume comes from packaged, processed foods and restaurant meals. Dr. Frieden urges:
“Reducing sodium in manufactured and restaurant foods will give consumers more choice and save lives.”" [from MedicalNewsToday.com]
"Good nutrition is essential for keeping Americans healthy across the lifespan. A healthy diet helps children grow and develop properly and reduces their risk of chronic diseases, including obesity. Adults who eat a healthy diet live longer and have a lower risk of obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers. Healthy eating can help people with chronic diseases manage these conditions and prevent complications.
Most Americans, however, do not have a healthy diet. Although breastfeeding is the ideal source of nutrition for infants, only 1 in 4 is exclusively breastfed through 6 months of age as recommended. Fewer than 1 in 10 adults and adolescents eat enough fruits and vegetables, and 9 in 10 Americans aged 2 years or older consume more than the recommended amount of sodium.
In addition, 6 in 10 young people aged 2 to 19 years and 5 in 10 adults consume a sugary drink on a given day. Processed foods and sugary drinks add unneeded sodium, saturated fats, and sugar to many diets, increasing the risk of chronic diseases.
Overweight and Obesity
Eating a healthy diet, along with getting enough physical activity and sleep, can help children grow up healthy and prevent overweight and obesity. In the United States, 19% of young people aged 2 to 19 years and 40% of adults have obesity, which can put them at risk for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers. In addition, obesity costs the US health care system $147 billion a year.
Heart Disease and Stroke
Two of the leading causes of heart disease and stroke are high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol. Consuming too much sodium can increase blood pressure and the risk for heart disease and stroke. Current guidelines recommend getting less than 2,300 mg a day, but Americans consume more than 3,400 mg a day on average.
Over 70% of the sodium that Americans eat comes from packaged, processed, store-bought, and restaurant foods. Eating foods low in saturated fats and high in fiber and increasing access to low-sodium foods, along with regular physical activity, can help prevent high blood cholesterol and high blood pressure.
Type 2 Diabetes
People who are overweight or have obesity are at increased risk of type 2 diabetes compared to those at a normal weight because, over time, their bodies become less able to use the insulin they make. More than 84 million US adults—or 1 in 3 people—have prediabetes, and 90% of them don’t know they have it. In the last 20 years, the number of adults diagnosed with diabetes has more than doubled as the US population has aged and become heavier.
Cancer
An unhealthy diet can increase the risk of some cancers. Overweight and obesity are associated with at least 13 types of cancer, including endometrial (uterine) cancer, breast cancer in postmenopausal women, and colorectal cancer. These cancers make up 40% of all cancers diagnosed.
Deficits in Brain Function
The brain develops most quickly in the first 1,000 days of life, from the start of pregnancy to the child’s second birthday. Having low levels of iron during pregnancy and early childhood is associated with mental and behavioral delays in children. Ensuring that iodine levels are high enough during pregnancy also helps a growing baby have the best brain development possible." [from CDC]
People at the Bottom of Our Unequal Society Suffer the Most from Covid-19
The facts presented above, and other facts related to class inequality, help explain why the poorest people are suffering the most from the covid-19 virus. The CDC, in its article titled, "COVID-19 in Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups," reports:
"A recent CDC MMWR report included race and ethnicity data from 580 patients hospitalized with lab-confirmed COVID-19 found that 45% of individuals for whom race or ethnicity data was available were white, compared to 55% of individuals in the surrounding community. However, 33% of hospitalized patients were black compared to 18% in the community and 8% were Hispanic, compared to 14% in the community. These data suggest an overrepresentation of blacks among hospitalized patients. Among COVID-19 deaths for which race and ethnicity data were available, New York Citypdf icon external icon identified death rates among Black/African American persons (92.3 deaths per 100,000 population) and Hispanic/Latino persons (74.3) that were substantially higher than that of white (45.2) or Asian (34.5) persons...
"For many people in racial and ethnic minority groups, living conditions may contribute to underlying health conditions and make it difficult to follow steps to prevent getting sick with COVID-19 or to seek treatment if they do get sick.
-
Members of racial and ethnic minorities may be more likely to live in densely populated areas because of institutional racism in the form of residential housing segregation. People living in densely populated areas may find it more difficult to practice prevention measures such as social distancing.
-
Research also suggests that racial residential segregation is a fundamental cause of health disparities. For example, racial residential segregation is linked with a variety of adverse health outcomes and underlying health conditions.2-5 These underlying conditions can also increase the likelihood of severe illness from COVID-19.
-
Many members of racial and ethnic minorities live in neighborhoods that are further from grocery stores and medical facilities, making it more difficult to receive care if sick and stock up on supplies that would allow them to stay home.
-
Multi-generational households, which may be more common among some racial and ethnic minority families6, may find it difficult to take precautions to protect older family members or isolate those who are sick, if space in the household is limited.
-
Racial and ethnic minority groups are over-represented in jails, prisons, and detention centers, which have specific risks due to congregate living, shared food service, and more....
-
Serious underlying medical conditions: Compared to whites, black Americans experience higher death rates, and higher prevalence rates of chronic conditions.10"
A very similar report was issued by the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies based on Boston, MA data.
"Despite the paucity of adequate data on race/ethnicity – and no data on socioeconomic position – in US national data on COVID-19 mortality, both investigative journalism and some state and local health departments are beginning to document evidence of the greater mortality burden of COVID-19 on communities of color and low-income communities."
When wealthy people get infected with covid-19 they do better, on average, than poor people because they have not experienced over the course of their lifetime the damage to their bodies caused by living in a very unhealthful environment.
THERE'S NO VACCINATION OR DRUG THAT CAN PROTECT US AND FUTURE GENERATIONS FROM TOXIC RADIOACTIVE PLUTONIUM
While the billionaire ruling plutocracy dazzles us with the classic "shiny object" of the great top doc's vaccines and drugs, they are rather secretly--for greed--undermining the health of not only ourselves but of many future generations.
For example, the ruling elites created plutonium, which didn't previously exist naturally. Plutonium is one of the most toxic substances in the world. (Read more about this here.) The elite rulers make plutonium for nuclear weapons and power plants; they have produced two and half million pounds of it in the last six decades. A single NASA rocket explosion in 1964 vaporized 2.1 pounds of plutonium in the atmosphere, and there are many such rocket explosions.
The CDC says,
"Most plutonium in the environment is in the form of microscopic particles that are the remnants of nuclear weapons testing and nuclear reactor accidents. Because it emits alpha particles, plutonium is most dangerous when inhaled. When plutonium particles are inhaled, they lodge in the lung tissue. The alpha particles can kill lung cells, which causes scarring of the lungs, leading to further lung disease and cancer."
Plutonium remains deadly for hundreds of thousands of years and eventually eats through whatever it is stored in; it cannot thus be truly stored safely for future generations. Rocket and nuclear power plant accidents contaminate our environment with plutonium. How does the NRC (U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission) solve this problem? Here's how, as recounted by Charles Perrow in his book, Normal Accidents: Living With High Risk Technologies-Updated Edition (pg. 70):
"Some influential scientists and academics, at the workshop that tried to formulate safety goals for the NRC, argued that the present generation is more important than future ones--for we need nuclear power to prevent economic and political crises--and who knows, there may be a technological fix that would mitigate the burden for the future generations of an accident in the present one."
"Who knows?" indeed!
If you're curious how the nuclear energy industry puts its spin on the fact (not disputed!) that there is no known solution to safely storing its hazardous radioactive waste, read this pro-nuclear-power article in Chemical & Engineeering News.
The ruling elites--including Dr. Fauci's billionaire buddies--act as if public health were their top priority but they behave in ways that show it is a low priority. The ruling elites are quietly killing us and future generations in particular with one secretive hand, while with the other hand very publicly offering us Dr. Fauci's touted vaccines and drugs against germs. It's chicken soup for cancer!
SOME PROBLEMS WITH VACCINES
The overall benefit of vaccinations is far more controversial than most people--including most physicians--realize. For a detailed book length explanation of this read Dissolving Illusions by Suzanne Humphries and Roman Bystrianyk. The immune system is extremely complex (on the same order of complexity as the brain), with components of it that are not even known to exist yet (since new ones keep getting discovered). There is not even a known way to tell from laboratory measurements of a person's blood or tissue if a person's immune system is better or worse from some intervention. Using vaccines to fiddle with the immune system in the hope of reducing the harm caused by a germ has been historically fraught with unexpected consequences, sometimes worse than the harm the vaccine is intended to prevent.
One problem, for example, is antibody-dependent enhancement: a vaccine against one germ making it easier for another germ to infect a person. A vaccine against a flu-causing coronavirus may have antigens that increase the ability of the covid-19 coronavirus to infect a person. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA reports:
"Researchers need to understand in particular whether the vaccine causes the same types of immune system malfunctions that have been observed in past vaccine development. Since the 1960s, tests of vaccine candidates for diseases such as dengue, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) have shown a paradoxical phenomenon: Some animals or people who received the vaccine and were later exposed to the virus developed more severe disease than those who had not been vaccinated (1). The vaccine-primed immune system, in certain cases, seemed to launch a shoddy response to the natural infection. “That is something we want to avoid,” says Kanta Subbarao, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza in Melbourne, Australia."
Read about one example of this: the swine flu vaccination in 1976 increased the risk for Guillain-Barré Syndrome.
CNN reports "Dengue vaccine found to worsen disease symptoms."
This problem was reported in PLOS regarding the SARS-CoV vaccine for the earlier flu:
An early concern for application of a SARS-CoV vaccine was the experience with other coronavirus infections which induced enhanced disease and immunopathology in animals when challenged with infectious virus [31], a concern reinforced by the report that animals given an alum adjuvanted SARS vaccine and subsequently challenged with SARS-CoV exhibited an immunopathologic lung reaction reminiscent of that described for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in infants and in animal models given RSV vaccine and challenged naturally (infants) or artificially (animals) with RSV [32], [33].
Additionally, there is the problem known as "original antigenic sin" that is described here:
"The concept of "original antigenic sin" was first proposed by Thomas Francis, Jr. in 1960. This phenomenon has the potential to rewrite what we understand about how the immune system responds to infections and its mechanistic implications on how vaccines should be designed. Antigenic sin has been demonstrated to occur in several infectious diseases in both animals and humans, including human influenza infection and dengue fever. The basis of "original antigenic sin" requires immunological memory, and our immune system ability to autocorrect. In the context of viral infections, it is expected that if we are exposed to a native strain of a pathogen, we should be able to mount a secondary immune response on subsequent exposure to the same pathogen. "Original antigenic sin" will not contradict this well-established immunological process, as long as the subsequent infectious antigen is identical to the original one. But "original antigenic sin" implies that when the epitope varies slightly, then the immune system relies on memory of the earlier infection, rather than mount another primary or secondary response to the new epitope which would allow faster and stronger responses. The result is that the immunological response may be inadequate against the new strain, because the immune system does not adapt and instead relies on its memory to mount a response. In the case of vaccines, if we only immunize to a single strain or epitope, and if that strain/epitope changes over time, then the immune system is unable to mount an accurate secondary response. In addition, depending of the first viral exposure the secondary immune response can result in an antibody-dependent enhancement of the disease or at the opposite, it could induce anergy. Both of them triggering loss of pathogen control and inducing aberrant clinical consequences." [emphasis added]
Read here, for example, how original antigenic sin relates to influenza virus vaccination:
"Human immunity against influenza viruses is complicated, indeed. Although protective antibodies can be readily produced in response to vaccination or infection, it has long been observed that early exposure to a specific influenza strain can prevent optimal antibody responses against variants of that strain that are encountered later in life. This phenomenon, called “original antigenic sin,” is addressed in a recent paper by Huang and colleagues, who studied how early exposure to an H1 subtype influenza virus may decrease immunity against current H1 viruses in adults born before 1982."
Read here about a study introduced by the authors with the statement, "Receiving influenza vaccination may increase the risk of other respiratory viruses, a phenomenon known as virus interference...This study aimed to investigate virus interference by comparing respiratory virus status among Department of Defense personnel based on their influenza vaccination status. Furthermore, individual respiratory viruses and their association with influenza vaccination were examined." The study found:
"Examining non-influenza viruses specifically, the odds of both coronavirus and human metapneumovirus in vaccinated individuals were significantly higher when compared to unvaccinated individuals (OR = 1.36 and 1.51, respectively) ." [NOTE: the "coronavirus" mentioned here is not the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is believed to cause Covid-19 disease.]
Read here about how the oral polio vaccine has caused people to get polio recently in Africa.
Read here the journal article titled, "Increased Risk of Noninfluenza Respiratory Virus Infections Associated With Receipt of Inactivated Influenza Vaccine." Read the discussion section to see how the issue is complex!
People older than 70 may remember what happened when the first polio vaccine was administered to a population extremely frighted of that disease:
"In April 1955 more than 200 000 children in five Western and mid-Western USA states received a polio vaccine in which the process of inactivating the live virus proved to be defective. Within days there were reports of paralysis and within a month the first mass vaccination programme against polio had to be abandoned. Subsequent investigations revealed that the vaccine, manufactured by the California-based family firm of Cutter Laboratories, had caused 40 000 cases of polio, leaving 200 children with varying degrees of paralysis and killing 10." [Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine]
The point here is not that vaccines are always more harmful than beneficial. The point is that a particular vaccine may or may not be--overall--more beneficial than harmful. It is not as simple as the mass media claim it is to know that a particular vaccine is more beneficial than harmful with great confidence, and it is virtually impossible to know the answer with certainty. Getting vaccinated means taking a gamble, one that it might make sense to take (I, personally, have--for better or for worse--been vaccinated for most of the various influenzas), but still it is a gamble for all that. People who choose not to be vaccinated do not deserve to be portrayed the way the establishment typically potrays them--as stark raving mad idiots.
It is also important to keep in mind that there is a public health, as opposed to purely personal health, reason for getting vaccinated (assuming the vaccine is not personally harmful): the more people who are immune to a contagious disease, the harder it is for that disease to spread. If one is personally immune to a disease, then one will not spread the disease to somebody else. One may not care if one, personally, gets the disease, but still care very much about wanting to prevent OTHERS from getting it, especially others who, for some medical reason, should not be vaccinated or who may suffer greater harm than oneself because of their age or pre-existing illnesses, etc., or simply because getting the disease earlier rather than later means not having the benefit of better treatments that are discovered as time goes by.
What does it Take to Know a Vaccine is Safe ?
Vaccines for different diseases are different, and the only way to know--at least with great confidence though not certainty--what effects (plural!)--a particular vaccine causes is to have a LARGE (many thousands of human subjects enrolled) RANDOMIZED DOUBLE BLIND (neither the subjects nor the physicians administering the vaccine know if it is vaccine or placebo) CLINICAL TRIAL and follow the subjects for a LONG time (MANY years) to compare the vaccine arm and the control arm of the trial not only for infection (yes or no) by the germ in question but also death by any cause and OTHER morbidity (i.e., illness). Such trials have not been, and are not, done. Small trials of short duration have been done, often not very scientifically. This is why we don't know with any high degree of confidence--never mind certainty--what the total effect is of vaccines in use today. We hope a vaccine does more good than harm, so we use it. But it is not unreasonable for people to be skeptical. (Science = skepticism, by the way.)