Perspectives About the American Health Care System
How the Pandemic Broke Health Care
I’m finally returning to writing after a 3 month hiatus on Search For Truth News.
I was diagnosed with advanced metastatic cancer at the end of June 2023, and too ill to write. The good news is that I am now recovering and want to share my new combined perspectives recently as a patient and and previously as a nurse practitioner provider. There are a lot of changes to describe and many people needing care in an overwhelmed system. I will post a series of articles that I believe will be helpful to everyone, as navigating health care is complex and challenging, even if you work in some aspect of the health care.
I am a deep diver for truth and love to research. As I interacted with a multitude of heath care workers at multiple levels and specialties, I took the opportunity to inquire about their personal perspectives about what is occurring in southern Oregon. Up to nearly half of the nurses and techs are traveling personnel in this midsized regional center, but the issues seem to be similar on a national level. All the hospitals are filled to capacity with long waits in the ER’s with patients lining the hallways. Every department is struggling to manage an enormous increase in the number of patients.
The problems have been long in coming, but I will start with the COVID pandemic and its sequelae because of the drastic changes in health care policies and politics, impacting everyone. Democracy, civil rights, health systems, free speech, evidence-based science, lives and economies were shattered by totalitarian public health authorities across the planet during the pandemic. Up until then, the United States public health system was still held in relatively high esteem by Western leaders. Dr. Anthony Fauci, MD, stood front and center as the trusted public policy maker for the American COVID response. Health and Human Services (HHS) and its subsidiaries, CDC, FDA, NIAID, and NIH were role models for global health policies and scientific research, providing gold standard templates for the rest of the world.
Details about Dr. Fauci and other key players can be found in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci. His book is a resource for this article.
Anthony Fauci: NIAID, Lockdowns, COVID Development and Treatment, Masking
Dr. Anthony Fauci, MD, spent half a century as a top autocratic health politician. He held various posts at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) beginning in 1968, becoming Director in 1984 until 2022. He oversaw extensive research of infectious diseases including HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis, malaria, Ebola, Zika and COVID-19. He led NIAID research on immune related diseases as well. He was one of the principal architects of the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief. In January 2017, Dr Fauci said there was no doubt that President Trump would be confronted with a surprise infectious disease outbreak during his presidency. He later became a member of Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force.
Anthony Fauci is a public health administrative bureaucrat and politician, NOT a clinician. He likely has not treated any patients since medical school. He was the highest paid federal employee with an annual salary of $417,608. Including Trump and Biden, Fauci advised seven US Presidents, the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, foreign governments, and the WHO. He was directly involved in Operation Warp Speed for development of the C-19 vaccines. On the White House stage, Fauci demanded blind faith in his announcements, claiming any doubts or questions about his statements amounted to attacks on science.
Fauci’s direct and indirect control through NIH, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust that provides 57 percent of global biomedical research funding guaranteed homage from leading medical researchers and universities. CNN’s television doctor, Peter Hotez called for making it a hate crime to criticize Dr Fauci. Big Pharma’s financial control over the media through advertising dollars endowed Fauci with personal virtues and medical expertise unsupported by either science or his public record. As the pandemic progressed, Dr Fauci dictated a series of policies resulting in America having the highest percentage of COVID deaths (14.5 %) in the world during 2020. Blinded by fear, many Americans failed to see mounting evidence about the failure of public health policies, vaccines and mandates.
Recall that Dr Fuci cancelled Thanksgiving and Christmas family gatherings in 2020 as part of social distancing that broke up and isolated families. The unprecedented quarantine of the healthy via the lockdowns killed far more people than COVID. The lockdowns obliterated national economies, plunged millions of people into poverty by closing “unessential” businesses, by deferred medical care of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and kidney failure, and escalated depression, suicides, mental illness, domestic and child abuse, addictions and isolation. 93,000 people died of overdoses in 2020. Mortalities and shortened lifespans by over 3 years occurred among Hispanics and Black Americans.
Global lockdowns disintegrated food chains, food production and distribution. During 2020, 10,000 children died of virus-linked hunger in 2020 and 500,000 children suffered malnutrition. 30 percent of teens and young adults reported worsening mental health and suicide rates increased by 50 percent. Millions of hospital and nursing home patients died alone without comfort or final goodbyes from their families. Dr Fauci admitted that he never assessed the costs of the isolation measures, explaining he only gives advice about public health.
According to RFK Jr (with some editing for space),
Following WWII, Life expectancy in the US climbed for 5 decades, making Americans among the longest- lived people in the developed world. IQ also grew steadily by three points each decade until the 1990’s (in children). When Dr. Fauci took office at the NIAID, America still ranked among the world’s healthiest populations. But by August 2021, a study by the Commonwealth Fund ranked America’s health care system dead last among industrialized nations, with the highest infant mortality and the lowest life expectancy. The life expectancy decrease widened the gap between the US and its peers to nearly five years. American children have lost seven IQ points since 2000.
Under Dr Fauci’s leadership, the allergic, autoimmune, and chronic illnesses which Congress specifically charged NIAID to investigate and prevent, have mushroomed to afflict 54 per cent of children, up from 12.8% when he took over NIAID in 1984. Dr. Fauci has offered no explanation as to why allergic diseases like asthma, eczema, food allergies, allergic rhinitis, and anaphylaxis suddenly exploded beginning in 1989, five years after he came to power. On its website, NIAID boasts that autoimmune disease is one of the agency’s top priorities. Some eighty autoimmune diseases, which were practically unknown prior to 1984, suddenly became epidemic under his watch. Autism which many scientists now consider an autoimmune disease exploded to one in thirty-four today. Neurologic diseases like ADHD, sleep and speech disorders, narcolepsy, facial tics and Tourette’s have become commonplace in American children.
Many of the illnesses became epidemic in the late 1980’s, after vaccine manufacturers were granted government protection from liability, and consequently accelerated their introduction of new vaccines. The manufacturer’s inserts of the 69 vaccines doses lists each of the now common illnesses - some 170 in total - as vaccine side effects.
Due to his vast budgetary discretion, his unique political access, his power over HHS and its various agencies, his moral authority, his moral flexibility, and his bully pulpit, Tony Fauci has more power than any other individual to direct public energies toward solutions. He has done the opposite.
Dr. Fauci initially pushed the idea publicly that COVID-19 was just a tragic, natural occurrence, rather than originating from a Wuhan lab leak. The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was well-known for doing high risk virology research, studying and manipulating coronaviruses. The NIAID had funded research at WIV for almost 40 years. He clearly had motive to dismiss the theory of a lab leak, but later documents and emails reveled evidence of Fauci’s behind the scenes involvement. A document known as the Proximal Origin Paper had extensive doubts about the virus being caused by a natural event.
Gain of function research had begun, funded by NIAID with billions of dollars each year in grants and contracts. Gain of function involves manipulating viruses to become more transmissible or deadly in humans, supposedly to help develop vaccines and therapeutics. This is a controversial practice, with many scientists vehemently opposed to it. Purposely creating a pathogen (bioweapon) that can kill millions of people should be considered criminal and banned. And yet Fauci has been a vocal advocate for it.
NIAID attempted to hide the research by funding a non-profit called EcoHealth Alliance. EcoHealth then funneled subcontracts and awards to WIV. At a November 2021 US Congressional hearing, Fauci attempted to redefine “gain of function” as a “nebulous term”. This summer, a House subcommittee released email documents proving WIV was known to Fauci to have been working on gain of function experiments on bat viruses.
Dr Fauci’s strategies for managing COVID-19 included mandatory masking, social distancing, quarantining the healthy through lockdowns, and instructing C-19 patients to stay home without treatment until they were seriously ill enough to be admitted to the hospital for IV Remdesivir and ventilation.
Dr Fauci was clearly aware that masking had little to no efficacy, evidenced by his own earlier stated position on masking. The NIH website lists 52 studies indicating that ordinary masking does not reduce viral infection rates, even in hospitals and surgical theaters. Furthermore, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of epidemic outbreaks. Additionally, 25 studies attribute harm caused by widespread masking, including respiratory, dental, dermatological, gastrointestinal and psychological injuries. Instead, the masks became a badge of tribal loyalty for those who embraced blind obedience, rather than critical thinking. Masking also served to amplify and maintain collective fear. It fostered social isolation and divisions between people.
Remdesivir prescribed to hospitalized patients was well known to physicians to cause severe adverse effects, including kidney and liver failure and death. This is the first time ever that early treatment of an infectious disease was withheld until hospitalization was needed for severe illness. Inexpensive and safe medicines that could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives was not allowed to be prescribed and ridiculed. Trump, other politicians, doctors and health authorities told Americans to wait for vaccines that would save them. Americans’ naïve idealism and constant media propaganda blocked their ability to believe that their government would do anything against their best interest.
COVID infections rates and deaths were artificially inflated as a way of pushing vaccination compliance. PCR tests were incapable of distinguishing C-19 from other viral illnesses through employment of high cycle thresholds. Influenza, for example, dropped to almost zero. CDC paid bonuses to hospitals for completing death certificates that claimed deaths were from COVID, even if people were admitted for trauma or other unrelated causes. CDC later admitted that only 6 percent of COVID deaths occurred in entirely healthy individuals. Autopsies were suppressed, which helped to avoid claims of death from vaccination. Hospitals were paid $39,000 per ventilator for COVID victims but only $13,000 for other respiratory problems.
The under-reporting of vaccine adverse effects by 99 percent on the vaccine injury surveillance system (VAERS) was never corrected.
The Early Treatment Protocols and the Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine War
There are also some very important heroes in this epic saga, unsuccessfully suppressed by the villains trying to kill us. The psychopaths could not overcome their stature, science expertise and determination to do the right thing in spite of threats and censorship by the medical establishment.
Two of these heroes are Dr. Peter McCullough and Dr. Pierre Kory. Both testified at US Congressional Hearings. They are among hundreds of scientists and physicians that were shocked by Anthony Fauci’s policies and who spoke out about effective and safe treatment protocols. Never before in the history of modern medicine has early treatment of disease been so overtly neglected by the medical profession. Dr. Fuci’s suppression of early treatment caused half a million deaths of Americans in the ICU, according to Dr Kory.
· Peter McCullough, MD, MPH: Internist & cardiologist at Baylor University Center and Baylor Heart and Vascular Hospital in Dallas Texas; published 600 peer-reviewed articles in National Library of Medicine; editor of two medical journals; Epidemiologist; member or chair for data safety monitoring boards of 24 clinical trials; conducted research on heart & kidney disease and early treatment of COVID-19; published early treatment COVID protocol.
· Pierre Kory, MD: President of Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC); Medical Director of the Trauma and Life Support Center at the University of Wisconsin Medical School Hospital; Critical Care Service Chief at Aura St. Lukes’s Medical Center in Milwaukee; book author; founded telemedicine practice for treating COVID-19 patients and ambulatory treatment centers; short-term clinical trials to test promising repurposed drugs and protocols for C-19.
Nearly 60 percent of hospitalized C-19 patients were Vitamin D deficient and 78 percent were obese or obese. Clearly, early prevention would include Vitamin D supplements and sun exposure, avoidance of sugar, and regular exercise. Zinc is well known to impede viral replication, and supplementation is inexpensive and easy. Quarantine and early home treatment of the sick, protecting the most vulnerable, re-purposing and use of existing medicines for C-19 are other measure that should have been widely recommended.
30 percent of COVID deaths in the US occurred in nursing homes. Sick elderly patients should have remained in the hospital or else sent to dedicated safe facilities, rather than returning them to nursing homes to infect other vulnerable patients. Field hospitals could have been set up to care for them once hospitals became crowded.
According to Dr Kory’s testimony at the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry waged a war against the inexpensive, safe use of “re-purposed” or “off-label” medications in favor of the high cost, untested and risky vaccines and Remdesivir. Over two dozen compounds proven to be safe in numerous trials that had effectiveness in the prevention or treatment of C-19 were misrepresented or distorted by NIH or FDA. Outside of the US, 39 countries and 28% of the world’s population had access to Ivermectin (IVM) or Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ).
The FDA approved IVM as a safe and effective drug for a wide range of parasites in 1996. Two Merck scientists won a Nobel Prize for developing it. WHO recommended it to entire populations at risk for parasite infections. Since 2012, multiple studies demonstrate that it inhibits a wide range of viruses as well, including Zika, dengue, yellow fever, West Nile and SARS-CoV-2. A single dose can eliminate cellular viral RNA within 48 hours.
By 2021 there were 70 controlled trials showing consistent benefits in mortality, time to recovery and time to viral clearance with the use of Ivermectin. A northern state in India with a population of 241 million people, Uttar Pradesh, eradicated C-19 by having all health care workers take IVM, treating all positive patients with IVM, and prophylaxis of all household contacts of positive cases.
IVM functions as an “ionophore”, meaning that it facilitates the transfer of zinc into cells, which inhibits viral replication of C-19, seasonal flu and many other viruses. It also reduces inflammation via multiple pathways and impairs the spike protein’s ability to attach to the ACE receptors on cell membranes, preventing viral entry. It prevents blood clots through binding to spike protein and inhibits the spike protein from binding to red blood cells.
Under US federal law, new drugs cannot qualify for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) if existing FDA approved drugs are effective. Thus, IVM and HCQ safety and efficacy were challenged to ensure that the vaccine patents owned by government HHS agencies and Big Pharma would pay off and Dr Fauci and his deputies received the $150,000 royalty payments.
Billions of people around the world have taken HCQ safely for malaria. Both IVM and HCQ were on the FDA lists as essential medications and approved for off-label use prior to the COVID false flag pandemic. During the 2004 outbreak of Coronavirus in China, Belgian researchers demonstrated HCQ efficacy. In 2005, CDC published studies confirming HCQ’s strong anti-viral effects for both prophylactic and therapeutic treatments.
In response to those studies, clinical physicians around the world began treating their patients using HCQ, either alone or in combination with zinc and either azithromycin and doxycycline. Follow-up studies in China, France, Saudia Arabia, Iran, Italy, India, and Brazil confirmed HCQ efficacy during the 2020 pandemic. In April 2020, Dr Vladimir Zelenco, MD reported success in treating 800 patients in New York city using the HCQ cocktail.
In May 2020, Dr. Harvey Risch, MD published a comprehensive review of HCQ efficacy of five COVID outpatient studies in affiliation with John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Risch is a Yale University Professor of Epidemiology. He demonstrated that HCQ had been misrepresented, misstated and misreported by Dr. Fauci and other government officials by employing faulty protocols in trials not using zinc or azithromycin of hospitalized patients late in the disease phase.
HCQ trials conducted by the NIH and NIAID focused only on hospitalized patients to demonstrate lack of efficacy by exploiting time of use and doses administered. Anti-viral medications only work in early disease during the viral replication phase (14 days). Doctors around the world who continued to use HCQ in early treatment had much lower rates of fatality than Western countries, where it was discontinued.
In August 2020 a paper written by Dr Peter McCullough described how HCQ and IVM acts as “the gun” and zinc acts as the “the bullet” for killing COVID. Azithromycin potentiates (increases) the anti-viral effects.
Malicious Tactics Blocking Access to Life Saving Drugs
1. Up to 20 clinical studies designed by Bill Gates, Fauci/HHS agencies, and WHO were designed to discredit HCQ and IVM using late disease phase hospital patient subjects and mega, unsafe doses up to 2,400 mg on day 1, then 800 mg daily, or 1200 mg/day for ten days of HCQ instead of the gold standard 400 mg/day dose. Those are toxic lethal doses. In a Brazil clinical trial, 39 percent of the study patients died from toxicity.
2. Not incorporating zinc and azithromycin (Zithromax) in clinical trials.
3. Fauci locked up 63 million doses of HCQ from the Strategic National Stockpile, falsely claiming that people were hoarding it. Because HCQ patent is expired, it is cheap and easy to manufacture by multiple suppliers.
4. Withdrawal of Emergency Use Authorization for HCQ and IVM.
5. Fraudulent reports in Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine based on non-existing data base in May 2020. False statements by Fauci.
6. Media smear campaign and lies by Fauci characterizing IVM as a horse medication, and that HCQ and IVM are dangerous toxic drugs.
7. Censorship of clinical providers regarding early treatment protocols on social media platforms.
8. Bringing federal and medical state board charges against physicians who prescribed IVM or HCQ as “unprofessional conduct” and threatening them with license suspension.
9. Convincing pharmacy boards in 8 states to prohibit dispensing of HCQ and IVM as off-label drugs written by physicians and other providers. 21 percent of all prescriptions written by American doctors are for off-label use. American individuals wanting IVM or HCQ in those states resorted to purchasing HCQ and IVM from other states or countries.
10. Fauci declared that HCQ and IVM could only be used as part of a clinical trial. He also demanded randomized, double-blind placebo studies on all outpatient trials for IVM and HCQ, knowing that the pharmaceutical industry would not fund those on drugs with expired patents. No such trials were required for masking, lockdowns, social distancing, 69 other vaccines given to children, or C-19 hospital studies.
11. Hospitals ceased to treat patients with HCQ or IVM beginning in June 2020.
12. The AMA (American Medical Association), the American Pharmacists Association and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists called on doctors to immediately stop prescribing IVM for COVID outside of clinical trials. Large pharmacy chains, including CVS and Walmart, refused to fill refused to fill prescriptions and began telling doctors what they can and cannot prescribe. The AMA ignored the rising toll of deaths and drug adverse effects from Remdesivir and vaccines. The AMA and FDA were attempting to regulate the practice of medicine, for which they have no legal authority.
13. In Florida and South Carolina, Blue Cross Blue Shield sent mass mailings to physicians that they would not pay for insurance claims for IVM and threatened audits of any physician who wrote prescriptions for IVM.
Present-Day First Hand Responses of Nursing, Tech, and Medical Staff to Questions about COVID
The above partial recap of what happened in the COVID 2020-2021 pandemic is by no means the whole story, although it’s the most damaging event to civilization since WW II. Excess deaths, low birth rates, decreased life spans, and illnesses such as cancer and heart disease in all age groups is off the charts and overwhelming the health care system. I took this opportunity as a patient to check in with clinical hospital and outpatient staff for insights into the current status of a medium-sized regional health care center in Oregon.
Amazingly in my recent experiences, not one single tech, nurse, or doctor admitted to knowing anything about long Covid. The only person who acknowledged mistakes and desire to recover was a volunteer transporter. They pretend it never happened and has no sequalae or need for long- haul COVID management. They don’t want to talk about it. I equate it to pretending to know nothing about diabetes and little credibility. Because they all end any discussion with a IDK response, I suspect they have been coached to make that response. No patient inquiries were made about vaccine status or history of COVID infection. No apologies either or acknowledgement of mistakes.
No routine C19 testing, no masks, no recent admit of any patient with C19. They do ask each patient upon registration if they have the usual list of C19 symptoms, known exposure, or international travel within the past 30 days. Approximately half the nurses and techs are traveling staff and have been vaccinated according to earlier mandates. The largest 3-hospital chain fired all non-vaccinated employees (hundreds) and allowed no or few exceptions. That greatly worsened an existing staffing shortage. Vaccine mandates still apply to attend any training for CNA’s, who are in very short supply with accelerated, compressed two- week courses.
Hospital beds are filled to capacity. Patients needing admit from the Emergency Departments wait long hours for a bed to open up or are not admitted at all. Patients tend to be discharged early and without careful post-hospital planning. Hospitalists see so many patients each day, that mistakes can happen from not enough time to review the chart. There are not enough primary care providers and most practices are closed to new patients. There are months of waiting time to see specialists. With lack of access to primary care, people go to the ER or Urgent Care. Primary care facilities refer anyone needing urgent diagnostics or procedures to the ED’s. The ED’s are crowded with 6 to 12 hours of wait time during the day. Overall, there are many gaps in services.
Staffing shortages are everywhere and at all levels. I waited over a month, for example for a social worker or nurse navigator to call me for assistance finding outpatient services. It typically takes hours to all day, or weeks, for anyone to call back if you call any agency for assistance or to schedule an appointment. I have learned that scheduling is a complicated task for workers, no matter what type of agency. As predicted, the number of ill people needing health care has grown over the past three years but the health care system is struggling to meet the demands.
Most of my readers of course already know about the adverse effects of the injection along with the high rates of complications and deaths from infection in all age groups. Myocarditis in young people, heart and lung disease, blood clotting and turbo-charged growth of cancers come to mind quickly. Lots of young, fit athletes dropping dead suddenly. Pilots suddenly having heart attacks or dying while flying the plane. Excess death rates have risen exponentially and birth rates have fallen, but the official vital population statics don’t reflect the losses. The VAER’s reporting system is one source of adverse effects, but is grossly under-estimated, since many organizations don’t allow staff to document them.
In spite of the above difficulties, I am impressed by the dedication and genuine desire of most of the front-line workers to provide quality care. These are good people who want to serve patients well. Lots of people want to enter the nursing field. There are technological and science advances. It is the administrative, for-profit system and Big Pharma that appears to be most at fault. Unfortunately, doctors and other clinicians have lost some of their voice and been censored by politicians. Health care has been broken, politicized and weaponized in some aspects, although recovery is happening as well.
My next article on the health care system will further describe the overwhelmed Emergency Departments and triage, access to care and potential solutions. Stay tuned and please subscribe.