Lawless commissioners deal with politics, not COVID-19

OPINION

BY LEN CABRERA

The Alachua County Commission voted unanimously to impose a mask mandate again, one day after the Alachua County School Board also voted unanimously to extend their mandate for eight weeks with no parental opt-out (which is against Florida law). This is a cynical (and tyrannical) move that allows the commission to kill two birds with one stone. First, they want to damage Governor DeSantis, who said there will be no school mask mandates in Florida. Second, they need to save face for their failed lockdown and masking policies from last year.

Their advisors aren’t stupid. They know the data. The Rt (a model parameter for the average number of people who will become infected by a person currently infected) dropped below 1.0 in Alachua County on August 10 (August 15 for Florida). That means cases have likely already hit the peak for this wave. The commissioners want to impose masks now to take credit for the upcoming drop in cases.

If you look at CDC data, Florida cases appear to have already peaked. The highest daily cases occurred on August 12, and the seven-day average peaked on August 16. The Florida Department of Health (FDOH) weekly report confirms that the weekly case count for both Florida (150,118 this week vs. 151,468 last week) and Alachua County (1,494 this week vs. 1,644 last week) are down from the previous week. Although Alachua County Administrator for FDOH Paul Myers told the Alachua County Commission on Wednesday that he expected the county’s case positivity to be up this week compared to last week, it was actually down from 16.4% last week to 14.7% this week.

The same data set demonstrates that all the non-pharmaceutical interventions have nothing to do with COVD-19 case rates. The graph below compares the 7-day average of daily cases per 100-thousand population in Hawaii and Texas. One state has a very strict mask mandate and the other does not, but their graphs are nearly identical. Hawaii has 61% of its population age 12 and older fully vaccinated; the number is 55% in Texas.

Real-world data repeatedly show that masks do not work to stop the spread of COVID-19. We said they wouldn’t in July 2020, based on pre-COVID (i.e., non-politicized) studies, and followed that up by showing the data in January 2021. Here’s an article looking at six countries where masks didn’t work. Here’s another one that looked at 12 countries. 

To justify their decision, the commissioners invited “local experts” who simply echoed the talking points from the national public health officials at CDC and NIH—officials who are scrambling to cover up their own incompetence in handling COVID-19, their crony-like support of Big Pharma, and/or their potential liability for causing the pandemic through gain-of-function research.

The commissioners ignored concerns from their own citizens and ignored information from other experts with the same credentials who disagree with mask mandates, such as Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Mark McDonald. They used the cloistered “experts” who hide in hospitals or behind closed doors, fueled by government grants, specifically because they knew the advice would support their desired policies.

When your funding comes from NIH or CDC, you tend to say what you’re expected to say. Those in the hospitals have a skewed view of COVID-19 because they never see the asymptomatic or less severe cases. They give advice based on worst-case scenarios and do not consider other factors like psychological development, personal liberty, or constitutionality. If it were up to emergency room physicians, motorcycles, trampolines, and many power tools would be outlawed, and the national speed limit would be 20 mph.

If you doubt my cynical interpretation of our political overlords, read on to see what REAL doctors who are actually treating COVID-19 have said and consider how much of this information has been shared by government officials or the mainstream media.

Note that the most basic preventative information is never mentioned by national public health officials. In fact, buried in all the thousands of pages of “emergency” legislation is the COVID-19 Consumer Protection Act, which is basically used to prosecute doctors who dare to actually treat patients or even recommend preventative measures like boosting Vitamin D levels. In fact, the FDA is now threatening to pull licenses and place $50,000 fines on compounding pharmacies who make 25-Hydroxy Vitamin D (see 55:26 in this interview with Dr. Dan Stocks).

There are dozens of studies that show the importance of Vitamin D in preventing adverse effects from COVID-19. A meta-analysis of 23 studies found that people who are Vitamin D deficient are over three times more likely to get infected and about five times as likely to get severe cases. There are now over 100 studies that demonstrate the importance of Vitamin D levels in preventing infection and mitigating outcomes of COVID-19.

There is also near-complete silence from public health officials on outpatient treatments for COVID-19. As early as April 2020, doctors found that Ivermectin helps reduce the serious cases of COVID-19, especially for patients treated early. However, the FDA was quick to step in and prevent the off-label use of the anti-parasitic drug, just like they did with the anti-viral hydroxychloroquine. Since then, 31 randomized, controlled trials have shown the effectiveness of Ivermectin. There are other similar treatments, but why use cheap, repurposed drugs when you can bill the taxpayer for $3,100 treatments of Remdesivir, which a University of Iowa study found does not decrease deaths and actually increases the length of hospital stays?

Corporate doctors (including those from UF Health Shands and North Florida Regional Medical Center) are actively prevented from going outside official government recommendations, but there have been some brave, independent doctors on the front lines of treating COVID-19. Their stories are ignored by most media outlets, and they face government hurdles at every turn.

Dr. Brian Tyson’s practice has treated over 6,000 COVID patients, and 100% of those who were treated by day 7 survived. In an August 11 interview, he railed against the CDC and NIH for effectively having no outpatient recommendations: “Since when, in the history of medicine, have we ever said we’re not going to treat somebody until they get so bad they need to be put in the hospital? This makes absolutely no sense.” He has an 8-part series at The Desert Review documenting his experience with treating COVID-19.

Here’s a list of other doctors who have done similar interviews:

• Dr. Ryan Cole, COVID treatments
• Dr. Pierre Kory, COVID treatments
• Dr. Mobeen Syed, COVID treatments
• Dr. Peter McCullough, how the vaccine works
• Dr. Raphael Stricker, side effects of the vaccine
• Dr. Dan Stocks, possible antibody-mediated viral enhancement
• Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of mRNA vaccines

Here’s a list of places where you can try to get COVID-19 treatments if your doctor refuses to provide any treatment except “wait until you need to be hospitalized.”

• Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (Dr. Pierre Kory)
• America’s Frontline Doctors (Dr. Simone Gold)
• Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
• My Free Doctor (Dr. Ben Marble)
• Zelenko Protocols (Dr. Vladimir Zelenko)
• Speak with an MD
• Private Health Inc. (Dr. Mollie James)

If you know anyone who suffered greatly from COVID-19 but wasn’t hospitalized, their pain and suffering was caused by NIH guidance that says not to do anything until breathing difficulties require hospitalization. If they had been given early treatment to prevent viral replication, they’d likely have been much better off. But rather than recommending Vitamin D or pointing to these simple treatments, our petty tyrants turn to “experts” whose only advice is “Wear a mask and get vaccinated.” At least Governor DeSantis is making monoclonal antibodies more available, but nearly every question at press conferences is about the false narrative that he has failed to push vaccines.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky finally admitted on CNN that fully-vaccinated people can transmit SARS-CoV-2. That’s quite a change from December 2020, when the CDC stated that the vaccine was 95% effective in preventing symptomatic spread. As late as March, Walensky told MSNBC that “vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick, and that it’s not just in the clinical trials, but also in real-world data.”

Why the change? She’ll likely call it “The Science^TM“, but it’s actually called political spin. Public health officials are finding it more difficult to lie in the wake of real-world data. Walensky’s admission was forced by studies like this one posted last month from the University of Wisconsin-Madison that found “no difference in viral loads when comparing unvaccinated individuals to those who have vaccine ‘breakthrough’ infections.’”

None of this information was shared or considered by the county commissioners or the school board members. Worse, these same officials will probably insist on rigid enforcement of their rules and complete compliance from their subjects, while they ignore the governor, the law, and the courts. Clearly, their actions are more about politics and control than they are about our health.

Updated number of RCTs for Ivermectin in response to a comment