A close doctor friend of mine whose name I will withhold has urged me to get vaccinated. She works with COVID patients, has been vaccinated, and thus far has experienced no problems. She plans to visit me in a few weeks and would be horrified if she infected me with the virus. If I “had some sort of immunity” she would feel much better, she said.
I don’t work with patients of any kind and have not been vaccinated for anything since childhood, with the exception of a tetanus shot some years ago. Each year the flu comes and goes, and each year it has missed me. I’m 77, have a healthy BMI, stay active, but have what everyone calls a comorbidity: COPD that originated in my genes.
Being in possession of a lung disease and an accumulation of many years, one could argue that I’m ripe for a virus attack.
Is a vaccine, therefore, the best way to fend off the invader? Does it promise immunity? Are there better options? How do I defeat this monster called COVID-19?
I remind myself that all life is threatened to some degree every second of the day. We can take acknowledged precautions but they don’t come with a guarantee. A beloved cousin of mine died in his sleep last year. He lived clean, was younger than me, and had just finished building a kayak and was looking forward to a 350-mile group bicycle tour later that week.
A close friend had always been a paragon of healthy living but still came down with multiple myeloma. His pro-life attitude never wavered, and he lives cancer-free today.
I also remind myself that science is conducted under political authority. Truth is not in the facts but in how it supports the insatiable hunger for power and revenue. We’ve witnessed this over the years with cancer research. Always researching, always funding, never finding. Anyone who says they found a cure, especially if it’s cheap, becomes a hunted animal.
Under the current COVID tyranny, doctors who announce unapproved effective treatments such as hydroxychloroquine get hit over the head. Researchers who recommend nutritional supplements or something as common as fresh air and sunshine face the same penalty. Yet Americans once embraced natural remedies.
[During the pandemic of 1918], medics found that severely ill flu patients nursed outdoors recovered better than those treated indoors. A combination of fresh air and sunlight seems to have prevented deaths among patients; and infections among medical staff. There is scientific support for this. Research shows that outdoor air is a natural disinfectant. Fresh air can kill the flu virus and other harmful germs. Equally, sunlight is germicidal and there is now evidence it can kill the flu virus.
But today, acceptable cures come only from politically-connected pharmaceutical companies.
Vaccine development is normally a multi-year, multi-billion dollar undertaking, paid for by the hapless public. Upstarts who promote supplements threaten the public’s willingness to accept a rushed vaccine and need to be brushed aside. They also, of course, threaten a major revenue stream.
Still, when one considers the history of vaccines there is every reason to respect them. Vaccines have wiped out smallpox and measles, so why not COVID-19? Sure, there’s obvious political support for a vaccine, but that doesn’t rule one out as a panacea.
Compounding a layman’s search for a sound understanding is the ever-shifting positions of authoritative sources. Should the public wear masks? No, says the NEJM in April, then later in July, yes. (Not exactly. Their earlier post was really a “yes” that was misinterpreted. How stupid of us.) Is the RT-PCR test being administered in a reliable manner? We don’t know, but we’re told any test that exceeds a cycle threshold (Ct) of 35 is highly suspect and could produce a false positive. Even the esteemed Dr. Fauci agrees. But wait — here’s a PhD in virology who says “The false-positive PCR problem is not a problem.” Regardless, most labs don’t report Ct. A positive test becomes a case, whether or not the person shows symptoms. And as testing increases, cases increase and become terrifying headlines, scaring the hell out of a compliant public.
Yet we know people are getting sick and some are dying. This is serious, deadly serious.
Assuming we have a choice, should we get vaccinated when our demographic becomes eligible?
Here is how I decided.
Those warp-speed vaccines
Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, tozinameran, aka Comirnaty, is one of two vaccines being given to the public. The FDA gave emergency use authorization (EUA) to Comirnaty on December 11, and a week later issued an EUA to Moderna for their vaccine. Both vaccines require two shots and work much the same way.
According to Comirnaty’s official description, it is for people 16 years of age or older. It contains a messenger RNA molecule (mRNA) with instructions to produce a SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.
When a person is given the vaccine, some of their cells will read the mRNA instructions and temporarily produce the spike protein. The person’s immune system will then recognise this protein as foreign and produce antibodies and activate T cells (white blood cells) to attack it.
If, later on, the person comes into contact with SARS-CoV-2 virus, their immune system will recognise it and be ready to defend the body against it. The mRNA from the vaccine does not stay in the body but is broken down shortly after vaccination.
Continuing, we read,
Efficacy was calculated in over 36,000 people from 16 years of age (including people over 75 years of age) who had no sign of previous infection. The study showed a 95% reduction in the number of symptomatic COVID-19 cases in the people who received the vaccine . . .
But . . .
The impact of vaccination with Comirnaty on the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the community is not yet known. It is not yet known how much vaccinated people may still be able to carry and spread the virus.
There are at least three points to consider:
1. Neither Pfizer nor Moderna can be held liable if you become ill or worse after being vaccinated. You can’t sue them until 2024. The quickest vaccine ever developed prior to 2020 was for mumps, which took four years and was licensed in 1967. Pfizer is pushing their COVID out after 8 months, with the FDA’s blessing.
2. The trials (see Table 1) excluded immunocompromised patients and pregnant or breastfeeding women.
3. The goal of the trials was to show the vaccine prevented “symptomatic disease in vaccine recipient.” It was NOT to show “Reduction in severe covid-19 (hospital admission, ICU, or death)” OR “Interruption of transmission (person to person spread).” In other words, the vaccine might not reduce your chances of going to the hospital or dying, and it might not reduce the likelihood of passing it on to others.
In fairness to the vaccine makers, “Because most people with symptomatic COVID-19 experience only mild symptoms, even trials involving 30,000 or more patients would turn up relatively few cases of severe disease.” [source]
This begs the question: With most people experiencing only “mild symptoms,” why the panic of rushing a COVID-19 vaccine to market, especially when there are well-known OTC prophylactics such as quercetin, zinc, vitamin C, melatonin, and vitamin D available?
We are told to wear masks, stay distant, and in some cases stay home to help reduce the spread. If you take the vaccine none of this will change.
If we were fighting a war, we would be killing ourselves before confronting the enemy. With few exceptions everyone’s wearing a mask, mandated or not, and some people still get sick. (The worst part of wearing them, aside from health issues, is the obedience they reflect. Obedience to Fauci? He said most people don’t need them.) Dr. Simone Gold [source, 13:12] suggests pushing back by going without a mask, not only for yourself but to serve as a role model for others to do the same.
All the data I’ve seen suffers from serious corruption. Testing is flawed because of the high thresholds (Ct > 35) that generate false positives; cases are defined as a positive test, whether or not symptoms are present; hospitals are rewarded for coding a patient as COVID even if they haven’t been tested in some states. A study finding no asymptomatic transmission, followed later by one finding asymptomatic transmission only blows more smoke in our faces.
How can you protect yourself?
Begin with common sense. If you’re feeling well go about your life. If you’re sick stay away from people until you get better. Cover your mouth when coughing or sneezing.
Keep your immune system strong. The ways of achieving this are almost without limit, but they include adequate sleep, regular exercise, a diet high in nutrients and low in sugar, little or no alcohol, a positive attitude to minimize stress. Let me emphasize that: A positive attitude, not fear and depression. And one more thing: relaxing and having fun with friends and family, an activity all but banned in 2020.
As we age, as I certainly have, our immune system needs help. Based on my experience and what I have read, I have a high regard for supplements.
Keep in mind the medical establishment regards nutritional supplements with disdain. As one nurse put it, they laugh at the suggestion they can be effective in preventing or treating anything, including COVID-19.
Nutritional supplements are safe. If you doubt it, look around. Where are the bodies?
Conversely, pharmaceutical drugs, properly prescribed and taken as directed, kill 106,000 Americans each year. That is over 2,000 each week, dead from their prescriptions. Some physicians estimate the true number of drug-induced deaths to be far higher.
Scare-stories notwithstanding, taking supplements is not the problem; it is a solution. Malnutrition is the problem.
Powerhouse vitamins — C, D, and Zinc
Vitamin C
The way in which vitamin C fights infection is fairly simple: infections and toxins cause oxidative stress in the body.
Vitamin C is attracted to the cells that have lost their electrons due to the oxidation process and easily gives up its own, which then neutralizes the potentially harmful cells.
With a consistent and healthy antioxidant level, dangerous cells are not allowed to proliferate and we don’t get sick. [source]
Vitamin C has its detractors but . . .
Linus Pauling personally took 18,000 mg of vitamin C daily. Although he was often ridiculed for this, it is interesting to note that Dr. Pauling had two more Nobel prizes than any of his critics. He died at age 93. Abram Hoffer, MD, a colleague of Pauling's, took megadoses of vitamin C and successfully gave it to thousands of patients over 55 years of medical practice. Dr. Hoffer died at age 91. [source]
Vitamin D
The most convincing study I’ve found was an Israeli population study conducted last year in which 14,022 subjects, aged two months to 103 years, were tested for both COVID-19 and plasma 25(OH) D levels (Vitamin D). “After excluding the 6,215 individuals without data on plasma 25(OH)D levels, the study sample composed of 7,807 individuals.”
Only 782 (10.1% ) of the 7,807 tested positive, which is itself encouraging given the unknown testing procedure. Of those with a positive test, 79 (10.01%) people had sufficient levels of vitamin D (30 ng/ml or more), while 703 (89.9%) had poor vitamin D levels.
The main finding of this study was the low plasma 25(OH)D level association with COVID‐19 hospitalization as a risk factor, particularly, for patients tested positively for COVID‐19, after adjusting for age, gender, SES [socio-economic status] and chronic, mental and physical disorders. Hence, low 25(OH)D level was identified as independently associated with the likelihood of COVID‐19 infection. This finding is in agreement with the results of other studies.
Zinc
Zinc is well-known as a fighter of the common cold, if it is taken early enough after onset of the sickness. Dr. Mercola writes,
Once inside your cells, zinc prevents viral replication. This is also why zinc and zinc ionophores need to be taken very early in the illness, or as a prophylactic.
The problem is that zinc is largely insoluble and cannot easily enter through the fatty wall of your cells. Getting all the way into the cell is crucial, as this is where the viral replication occurs. This is why zinc ionophores [such as HCQ or quercetin] are so important.
Preliminary data also suggest people with low zinc levels are more likely to die from COVID-19 than those with higher levels.
Each unit increase of plasma zinc at admission to hospital was associated with a 7% reduced risk of in-hospital mortality.
Conclusion
I could be dead by the time you read this, but I will not have died without a fight. Science is never settled, and what is good for one person might be life-threatening to another. I live as I always have, without a mask, with no fear of getting close to others, getting plenty of exercise, but with a religious obedience to daily supplements. Of all the choices I’m aware of, healthy living is the best way of keeping enemies at bay.
I hope my good doctor friend will still pay this unvaccinated old guy a visit.
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