Is Aspirin the New Horse Dewormer?
By Brian C. Joondeph, MD | American Thinker | October 18, 2021
Aspirin is one of those drugs that has been around forever. It is commonly used as a pain reliever, anti-inflammatory, and blood thinner. Surprisingly it may also have benefits in treating COVID.
A paper in Anesthesia and Analgesia published last spring titled, “Aspirin use is associated with decreased mechanical ventilation, intensive care unit admission, and in-hospital mortality in hospitalized patients with coronavirus disease 2019.”
This was a retrospective, observational study of adult patients admitted to multiple hospitals in the U.S. between March and July 2020, in the early days of COVID. The primary outcome addressed by the researchers from George Washington University was the need for mechanical ventilation, which then, and still now, carries an extremely high chance of never leaving the ICU alive.
This was not a gold standard randomized prospective clinical trial. That would not be feasible in this situation since study patients were already hospitalized and critically ill. Remember in the early days, one needed to be extremely ill before even being admitted to the hospital rather than being sent home until sick enough to return and go straight to the ICU.
But the results were impressive. As reported last week by the Jerusalem Post,
The team investigated more than 400 COVID patients from hospitals across the United States who take aspirin unrelated to their COVID disease, and found that the treatment reduced the risk of several parameters by almost half: reaching mechanical ventilation by 44%, ICU admissions by 43%, and overall in-hospital mortality by 47%.
Why would aspirin be helpful for COVID, a respiratory disease? What if COVID is more than simply a lung disease or pneumonia? COVID is actually thought to be a microvascular disease causing blood clots, as described in the medical journal Circulation,
Although most patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) present with a mild upper respiratory tract infection and then recover, some infected patients develop pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, multi-organ failure, and death. Clues to the pathogenesis of severe COVID-19 may lie in the systemic inflammation and thrombosis observed in infected patients. We propose that severe COVID-19 is a microvascular disease in which coronavirus infection activates endothelial cells, triggering exocytosis, a rapid vascular response that drives microvascular inflammation and thrombosis.
Note the thrombosis aspect, blood clots forming in the lungs and elsewhere in the body. Aspirin, as a blood thinner, reduces the risk of blood clots, explaining its potential benefit for COVID.

YouTube screen grab
For the same reason, the American Heart Association recommends,
If you have had a heart attack or stroke, your doctor may want you to take a daily low dose of aspirin to help prevent another. Aspirin is part of a well-established treatment plan for patients with a history of heart attack or stroke.
Add the appropriate caveat, which I would echo, “You should not take daily low-dose aspirin on your own without talking to your doctor. The risks and benefits vary for each person.”
How did aspirin get its start? Over 3,500 years ago, willow bark, known as “nature’s aspirin,” was used as a painkiller and antipyretic by ancient Egyptians and Greeks, and in a chemical synthesis by a Bayer chemist in 1897.
Aside from pain relief, it was found to have anti-platelet and anti-cancer effects. It’s also on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines, along with another familiar drug, ivermectin. The Harvard-based physicians’ health study in the 1980s found that low-dose aspirin reduced the risk of heart attack by 44 percent.
A recently published Israeli study found, “Aspirin use is associated with better outcomes among COVID-19 positive patients.” This included a lower likelihood of infection, disease duration, and hospital survival. In other words, aspirin works as both a preventative and as a treatment.
Aspirin is another potential therapeutic, along with hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, which is inexpensive, readily available, and relatively safe, and could save countless lives when used appropriately for COVID. An editorial in Anesthesia and Analgesia described aspirin for COVID as, “An old, low-cost therapy with a strong rationale.” And right on cue, it’s time for aspirin-bashing to commence.
At the same time as these papers showing potential benefits of aspirin for COVID hit the news, the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, on Oct. 12, posted draft recommendations saying that, “Once people turn 60 years old, they should not consider starting to take aspirin because the risk of bleeding cancels out the benefits of preventing heart disease.” What curious timing.
Certainly, aspirin has potential side effects including an increased risk of bleeding. All medications have side effects and one can even die from drinking too much water. It always comes down to medical decision-making, balancing risks and benefits, in consultation with one’s healthcare provider.
The media wasted no time in using the suddenly released and new aspirin recommendations at the same time as news reports on aspirin benefits for COVID hit the news.
NBC reported, “Most adults shouldn’t take daily aspirin to prevent heart attack, panel says.” The New York Times echoed, “Daily low-dose aspirin no longer recommended by doctors, if you’re healthy.” Healthline went further, “Doctors warn daily aspirin use can be dangerous.” Driving or walking across the street can be dangerous too.
Sound familiar? How many adults have been taking low-dose aspirin daily for many years, based on the decades-old Harvard study? I have as I have a family history of cardiovascular disease and my internist and I agree that the benefits outweigh the risks, despite the new recommendations.
Similarly how many patients have been taking hydroxychloroquine for years or decades for arthritis or lupus, without dying from the drug as Fox News crank Neil Cavuto warned last year? How many take ivermectin to prevent parasitic infections? Now we can add aspirin to the list of once safe and effective medications — that’s now on par with cyanide or strychnine.
It seems the medical establishment and the media want to squash any potential COVID therapeutic, especially the inexpensive ones, instead pushing vaccines and extremely pricey medicines like Merck’s new $712 COVID drug.
The media described ivermectin as horse dewormer or animal paste, seemingly unaware that it is an FDA-approved medication for human use and was once honored with a Nobel Prize. Watch Joe Rogan put CNN’s medical mouthpiece, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, in a virtual chokehold until he tapped out and admitted to CNN’s irresponsible reporting and lying about ivermectin.
Aspirin also has non-medical uses including as a stain remover, garden enhancer, and dandruff remedy. I would love to hear President Trump mention the potential benefits of aspirin for COVID and see the news headlines of Trump recommending people ingest detergent, fertilizer, or shampoo to treat COVID.
Welcome to simple aspirin, the media’s new horse dewormer.
Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and writer.
Lockdown: Where Did ‘The Science’ Come From?
By Noah Carl • The Daily Sceptic • October 19, 2021
In a previous post, I looked at where ‘The Science’ of community masking came from. Here I’ll do the same thing for lockdowns.
As many lockdown sceptics (including myself) have noted, lockdowns represent a radical departure from conventional forms of pandemic management. There is no evidence that, before 2020, they were considered an effective way to deal with influenza pandemics.
In a 2006 paper, four leading scientists (including Donald Henderson, who led the effort to eradicate smallpox) examined measures for controlling pandemic influenza. Regarding “large-scale quarantine”, they wrote, “The negative consequences… are so extreme” that this measure “should be eliminated from serious consideration”.
Likewise, a WHO report published mere months before the COVID-19 pandemic classified “quarantine of exposed individuals” as “not recommended under any circumstances”. The report noted that “there is no obvious rationale for this measure”.
And we all know what the U.K.’s own ‘Pandemic Preparedness Strategy’ said, namely: “It will not be possible to halt the spread of a new pandemic influenza virus, and it would be a waste of public health resources and capacity to attempt to do so.”
As an additional exercise, I searched the pandemic preparedness plans of all the English-speaking Western countries (U.K., Ireland, U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand) for mentions of ‘lockdown’, ‘lock-down’ ‘lock down’ or ‘curfew’.
Only ‘curfew’ was mentioned, and only once – in Ireland’s plan. The relevant sentence was: “Mandatory quarantine and curfews are not considered necessary.” None of the lockdown strings were mentioned in any of the countries’ plans.
So where did ‘The Science’ of controlling Covid using lockdowns come from? As everyone knows, China implemented the first lockdown (of Hubei province) in January of 2020. Yet it wasn’t until March that lockdowns became part of ‘The Science’.
As this chart taken from the paper by David Rozado shows, major Western media outlets did not start mentioning ‘lockdown’ frequently until March:

And this chart confirms that worldwide Google search interest for ‘lockdown’ was essentially nil until 8th March 2020:

So what happened in early March? Well, Italy was the first Western country to lock down – on 9th March last year. And as Michael Senger argues, its decision appears to have been prompted by the WHO’s report of 24th February, which gave a glowing evaluation of China’s lockdown. (Senger’s piece is well worth reading.)
Other Western countries then followed suit. The next most important event, following Italy’s decision to lock down, was the publication of a report by Neil Ferguson’s team on 16th March.
This report has been described as the “catalyst for policy reversal”. Up until then, the U.K. had been more or less following its pandemic preparedness plan. As late as March 5th, Chris Whitty told the Health and Social Care Committee that “what we’re very keen to do is minimise social and economic disruption”.
Although other, similar reports had already been published, the analysis by Neil Ferguson’s team was seen as particularly authoritative. According to the New York Times, the report “also influenced the White House to strengthen its measures”.
On March 17th, Neil Ferguson and his colleagues held a press conference after returning from Downing Street. They confirmed that Britain would be adopting a new strategy. “The aim is not to slow the rate of growth of cases but actually pull the epidemic into reverse,” Ferguson said.
As to why the U.K. was changing tack, Ferguson noted, “We have had bad news from Italy and from early experience in UK hospitals”. However, subsequent revelations suggest that “bad news” was less important than the shifting of the Overton window.
In an interview with the Times published in December last year, Ferguson noted that “people’s sense of what is possible in terms of control changed quite dramatically between January and March”. Referring to China’s lockdown, he elaborated, “We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought… And then Italy did it. And we realised we could”.
After China’s initial response in Hubei, it took two months for lockdowns to go from ‘unprecedented’ to ‘unavoidable’. They received two major doses of intellectual credibility: first from the WHO, and then from Neil Ferguson’s team. Italy set the all-important precedent for Western countries.
As to whether one should trust ‘The Science’ on lockdowns, a reasonable answer would be, ‘Do you mean the pre or the post-Covid science?’
Nebraska AG Says Doctors Can Legally Prescribe Ivermectin, HCQ for COVID, Calls Out FDA, CDC, Fauci, Media for ‘Fueling Confusion and Misinformation’
By Megan Redshaw | The Defender | October 18, 2021
Few subjects have been more controversial than ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine — two long-established, inexpensive medications widely and successfully used in many parts of the world for the prevention and treatment of COVID.
By contrast, the use of both medications against COVID has been largely suppressed in the U.S, where doctors have been threatened and punished for prescribing them.
On Oct. 15, Nebraska Attorney General (AG) Doug Peterson issued a legal opinion that Nebraska healthcare providers can legally prescribe off-label medications like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID, so long as they obtain informed consent from the patient.
However, if they did neglect to obtain consent, deceive, prescribe excessively high doses or other misconduct, they could be subject to discipline, Peterson wrote.
The AG’s office emphasized it was not recommending any specific treatment for COVID. “That is not our role,” Peterson wrote. “Rather, we address only the off-label early treatment options discussed in this opinion and conclude that the available evidence suggests they might work for some people.”
Peterson said allowing physicians to consider early treatments will free them to evaluate additional tools that could save lives, keep patients out of the hospital and provide relief for our already strained healthcare system.
The opinion, based on an assessment of relevant scientific literature, was rendered in response to a request by Dannette Smith, CEO of the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services.
Smith asked the AG’s office to look into whether doctors could face discipline or legal action under Nebraska’s Uniform Credential Act (UCA) — meant to protect public health, safety and welfare — if they prescribed ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.
“After receiving your question and conducting our investigation, we have found significant controversy and suspect information about potential COVID-19 treatments,” Peterson wrote.
For example, a paper published in the Lancet — one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world — denounced hydroxychloroquine as dangerous, yet the statistics were flawed and the authors refused to provide analyzed data.
The paper was retracted, but not before countries stopped using the drug and trials were cancelled or interrupted.
“The Lancet’s own editor-in-chief admitted that the paper was a ‘fabrication,’ a ‘monumental fraud’ and a ‘shocking example of research misconduct’ in the middle of a global health emergency,” Peterson wrote in the opinion.
A recently published paper on COVID recognized that “for reasons that are yet to be clarified,” early treatment has not been emphasized despite numerous U.S. healthcare providers advocating for early treatment and “scores of treating and academic physicians” — who have published papers in well respected journals — urging early interventions.
Peterson cited numerous studies showing ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine reduced mortality by up to 75% or more when used as a preventative or prophylaxis for COVID, suggesting hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved had the drugs been widely used in America.
“Every citizen — Democrat or Republican — should be grateful for Doug Peterson’s thoughtful and courageous counteroffensive against the efforts of Big Pharma, its captive federal regulators, and its media and social media allies to silence doctors and deny Americans life-saving treatments,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chairman of Children’s Health Defense, told The Defender via email.
“We finally have a leader who puts constitutional rights, peer-reviewed science and human health above industry profits. Doug Peterson is uncowed and unbowed — a genuine hero on horseback for all Americans.” Kennedy said.
Children’s Health Defense President Mary Holland agreed. “This Nebraska AG opinion lets doctors get back to being doctors — without being second-guessed by government, pharmacists and others interfering in the crucial doctor-patient relationship,” Holland said.
Although the AG’s office did not rule out the possibility that other off-label drugs might show promise — either now or in the future — as a prophylaxis or treatment against COVID, it confined its opinion to ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for the sake of brevity.
Nebraska AG highlights science on ivermectin
In his legal opinion, Peterson concluded evidence showed ivermectin demonstrated striking effectiveness in preventing and treating COVID, and any side effects were primarily minor and transient. “Thus, the UCA does not preclude physicians from considering ivermectin for the prevention or treatment of COVID,” Peterson wrote.
In the decade leading up to the COVID pandemic, Peterson found numerous studies showing ivermectin’s antiviral activity against several RNA viruses by blocking the nuclear trafficking of viral proteins, adding to 50 years of research confirming ivermectin’s antiviral effects.
In addition, safety data for ivermectin showed side effects were “vanishingly small.” The latest statistics available through VigiAccess reported only 5,674 adverse drug reactions to ivermectin between 1992 and October 13, 2021, an “incredibly low” number given that 3.7 billion doses have been administered since the 1980s, Peterson wrote.
Peterson cited several studies showing ivermectin led to improvement of COVID outcomes when used in early treatment or as a prophylaxis, while noting many studies with negative findings about ivermectin “excluded most available evidence,” cherry picked data within studies, misreported data, made unsupported assertions of adverse reactions to ivermectin and had “conclusions that did follow from evidence.”
Peterson also found that epidemiological evidence for ivermectin’s effectiveness, derived by analyzing COVID-related data from various states, countries or regions is instructive in the context of a global pandemic.
In one instance, a group of scholars analyzed data comparing COVID rates of countries that routinely administer ivermectin as a prophylaxis and countries that did not. The research showed “countries with routine mass drug administration of prophylactic … ivermectin have a significantly lower incidence of COVID-19.”
“This ‘highly significant’ correlation manifests itself not only ‘in a worldwide context’ but also when comparing African countries that regularly administer prophylactic ‘ivermectin against parasitic infections’ and African countries that do not,” Peterson wrote. “Based on these results, the researchers surmised that these results may be connected to ivermectin’s ability to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 replication, which likely leads to lower infection rates.”
Nebraska AG calls out FDA, Fauci on hypocrisy on ivermectin
Many U.S. health agencies have now addressed the use of ivermectin for COVID. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has adopted a neutral position, choosing not to recommend for or against the use of ivermectin — a change from its position in January 2021 where it discouraged use of the drug for treatment of COVID.
Peterson wrote:
“The reason for the change is the NIH recognized several randomized trials and retrospective cohort studies of ivermectin use in patients with COVID-19 have been published in peer-reviewed journals. And some of those studies reported positive outcomes, including shorter time to resolution of disease manifestations that were attributed to COVID-19, greater reduction in inflammatory marker levels, shorter time to viral clearance, [and] lower mortality rates in patients who received ivermectin than in patients who received comparator drugs or placebo.”
Yet, on Aug. 29, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases within the NIH, went on CNN and announced “there is no clinical evidence” that ivermectin works for the prevention or treatment of COVID. Fauci went on to reiterate that “there is no evidence whatsoever” that it works.
“This definitive claim directly contradicts the NIH’s recognition that ‘several randomized trials … published in peer-reviewed journals’ have reported data indicating that ivermectin is effective as a COVI D-19 treatment,” Peterson wrote.
In March 2021, the FDA posted a webpage, “Why You Should Not Use lvermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19.”
“Although the FDA’s concern was stories of some people using the animal form of ivermectin or excessive doses of the human form, the title broadly condemned any use of ivermectin in connection with COVID-19,” Peterson wrote. “Yet, there was no basis for its sweeping condemnation.”
Peterson wrote:
“Indeed, the FDA itself acknowledged on that very webpage (and continued to do so until the page changed on September 3, 2021) that the agency had not even ‘reviewed data to support use of ivermectin in COVID-19 patients to treat or to prevent COVID-19.’ But without reviewing the available data, which had long since been available and accumulating, it is unclear what basis the FDA had for denouncing ivermectin as a treatment or prophylaxis for COVID-19.
“On that same webpage, the FDA also declared that ‘[i]vermectin is not an anti-viral (a drug for treating viruses).’ It did so while another one of its webpages simultaneously cited a study in Antiviral Research that identified ivermectin as a medicine ‘previously shown to have broad-spectrum anti-viral activity.’”
“It is telling that the FDA deleted the line about ivermectin not being ‘anti-viral’ when it amended the first webpage on September 3, 2021,” Peterson noted.
Peterson said the FDA’s most controversial statement on ivermectin was made on Aug. 21, when it posted a link on Twitter to its “Why You Should Not Use lvermectin” webpage with this statement: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
“This message is troubling not only because it makes light of a serious matter but also because it inaccurately implies that ivermectin is only for horses or cows,” Peterson wrote.
Peterson said the FDA has assailed ivermectin’s safety while ignoring the fact that physicians routinely prescribe medications for off-label use and that ivermectin is a “particularly well-tolerated medicine with an established safety record.”
Peterson added the FDA is ignoring several randomized controlled trials and at least one metaanalysis suggesting ivermectin is effective against COVID. He pointed out the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention has adopted a similar stance — unsupported by scientific evidence — and the media has fueled confusion and misinformation on the drug.
Peterson questions professional associations’ stance on ivermectin
Professional associations in the U.S. and internationally have adopted conflicting positions on ivermectin and COVID. The American Medical Association (AMA), American Pharmacists Association (APhA) and American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) issued a statement in September strongly opposing the ordering, prescribing or dispensing of ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID outside of a clinical trial.
But their statement relied solely on the FDA’s and CDC’s suspect positions.
The AMA, APhA and ASHP also mentioned a statement by Merck — the original patent-holder — opposing the use of ivermectin for COVID because of a “concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies.”
“But Merck, of all sources, knows that ivermectin is exceedingly safe, so the absence of safety data in recent studies should not be concerning to the company,” Peterson wrote.
Peterson called into question the objectivity of Merck in providing an opinion on ivermectin that U.S. health agencies are relying upon. “Why would ivermectin’s original patent holder go out of its way to question this medicine by creating the impression that it might not be safe?” Peterson asked. “There are at least two plausible reasons.”
Peterson explained:
“First, ivermectin is no longer under patent, so Merck does not profit from it anymore. That likely explains why Merck declined to ‘conduct clinical trials’ on ivermectin and COVID-19 when given the chance.
“Second, Merck has a significant financial interest in the medical profession rejecting ivermectin as an early treatment for COVID-19. [T]he U.S. government has agreed to pay [Merck] about $1.2 billion for 1.7 million courses of its experimental COVID-19 treatment, if it is proven to work in an ongoing large trial and authorized by U.S. regulators.”
Merck’s treatment is known as “molnupiravir,” and aims to stop COVID from progressing when given early in the course of disease. When Merck announced Oct. 1, that preliminary studies indicated molnupiravir reduced hospitalizations and deaths by half, the drug maker’s stock price immediately jumped to 12.3%.
“Thus, if low-cost ivermectin works better than, or even the same as molnupiravir, that could cost Merck billions of dollars,” Peterson wrote.
Peterson takes on science of hydroxychloroquine
Peterson said based on his review of the evidence, his office did not find clear and convincing evidence that would warrant disciplining physicians who prescribe hydroxychloroquine for the prevention or early treatment of COVID after first obtaining informed patient consent.
Peterson pointed to similar findings with hydroxychloroquine — a less toxic derivative of a medicine named chloroquine — widely used since it was approved by the FDA in 1955 for treatment of malaria.
Peterson noted that as early as 2004, a lab study revealed chloroquine was “an effective inhibitor of the replication of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in vitro” and should “be considered for immediate use in the prevention and treatment of SARS-CoV infections.”
In 2005, another study showed chloroquine had strong antiviral effects on SARS-CoV infection and was effective in preventing the spread of SARS-CoV in cell cultures.
Other studies showed hydroxychloroquine exhibited antiviral properties that can inhibit SARS-CoV-2 virus entry, transmission and replication, and contains anti-inflammatory properties that help regulate pro-inflammatory cytokines.
Peterson wrote, “many large observational studies suggest that hydroxychloroquine significantly reduces the risk of hospitalization and death when administered to particularly high-risk outpatients as part of early COVID-19 treatment.”
Peterson said the drug is considered to be so safe it can be prescribed for pregnant women, yet during the pandemic, the FDA raised questions about hydroxychloroquine and adverse cardiac events.
These concerns prompted one group of researchers to conduct a systematic review of the hydroxychloroquine safety literature pre-COVID. Their review indicated people taking hydroxychloroquine in appropriate doses “are at very low risk of experiencing cardiac [adverse events], particularly with short-term administration” of the drug.
Researchers noted COVID itself can cause cardiac problems, and there was no reason “to think the medication itself had changed after 70 years of widespread use,” Peterson wrote.
Peterson said one piece of key flawed data had substantially contributed to safety concerns surrounding the drug — the admittedly fraudulent Lancet study that falsely claimed hydroxychloroquine increased frequency of ventricular arrhythmias when used for treatment of COVID.
The findings were so startling that major drug trials involving hydroxychloroquine “were immediately halted” and the World Health Organization pressured countries like Indonesia that were widely using hydroxychloroquine to ban it. Some countries, including France, Italy and Belgium, stopped using it for COVID altogether.
Peterson wrote:
“The problem, however, is that the study was based on false data from a company named Surgisphere, whose founder and CEO Sapan Desai was a co-author on the published paper.
“The data were so obviously flawed that journalists and outside researchers began raising concerns within days of the paper’s publication. Even the Lancet’s editor in chief, Dr. Richard Horton, admitted that the paper was a fabrication, a monumental fraud and a shocking example of research misconduct in the middle of a global health emergency.”
Despite calls for the Lancet to provide a full expansion of what happened, the publication declined to provide details for the retraction.
As with ivermectin, the FDA and NIH adopted positions against the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID — making assertions that were unsupported by data. The AMA, APhA and ASHP, which opposed ivermectin, also resisted hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID.
By contrast, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and other physician groups, support the use of both ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as an early treatment option for COVID. Peterson cited an article co-authored by more than 50 doctors in Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine who advocated an early treatment protocol that includes hydroxychloroquine as a key component.
Governing law allows physicians to prescribe ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, AG says
Neb. Rev. Stat. § 38-179 generally defines unprofessional conduct as a “departure from or failure to conform to the standards of acceptable and prevailing practice of a profession or the ethics of the profession, regardless of whether a person, consumer or entity is injured, or conduct that is likely to deceive or defraud the public or is detrimental to the public interest.”
The regulation governing physicians states that unprofessional conduct includes:
“[c]onduct or practice outside the normal standard of care in the State of Nebraska which is or might be harmful or dangerous to the health of the patient or the public, not to include a single act of ordinary negligence.”
Peterson said healthcare providers do not violate the standard of care when they choose between two reasonable approaches to medicine.
“Regulations also indicate that physicians may utilize reasonable investigative or unproven therapies that reflect a reasonable approach to medicine so long as physicians obtain written informed patient consent,” Peterson wrote.
“Informed consent concerns a doctor’s duty to inform his or her patient, and it includes telling patients about the nature of the pertinent ailment or condition, the risks of the proposed treatment or procedure and the risks of any alternative methods of treatment, including the risks of failing to undergo any treatment at all.”
Peterson said this applies to prescribing medicine for purposes other than uses approved by the FDA, and that doing so falls within the standard of care repeatedly recognized by the courts.
Peterson said the U.S. Supreme Court has also affirmed that “off-label usage of medical devices” is an “accepted and necessary” practice, and the FDA has held the position for decades that “a physician may prescribe [a drug] for uses or in treatment regimens or patient populations that are not included in approved labeling.”
Peterson said the FDA has stated “healthcare providers generally may prescribe [a] drug for an unapproved use when they judge that it is medically appropriate for their patient, and nothing in the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (“FDCA”) limit[s] the manner in which a physician may use an approved drug.”
In a statement to KETV NewsWatch 7, Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services said:
“The Department of Health and Human Services appreciates the AG’s office delivering an opinion on this matter. The document is posted and available to medical providers as they determine appropriate course of treatment for their patients.”
© 2021 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
The UK’s National “Crisis”: Age-Adjusted Mortality Is at 2008 Levels
By Mark Avis – Mises Wire – 10/13/2021
All over the world, populations have been locked up, have become fearful, and none of it can be justified. Looking at the UK, the overall death rate for 2020 is not unprecedented, and some of the increase in the death rate is likely the result of an incomprehensibly bad covid policy.
Sometimes, a dam breaks, and reality intrudes on media and political narratives. Just such a break is the publication of the mortality rate for England and Wales by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS). The report can be found here. The content that is of greatest interest is the total mortality and mortality rates over time. Below is figure 1 from the report. A red line has been added to give a sense of where mortality was in 2020 compared with the past. The figure shows mortality rates with no adjustments.
What is readily apparent is that there is, indeed, a jump in the mortality rate. However, if comparing the mortality rate with that of 1992, for example, we can see that it is not that high. In addition, the ONS provides a far more useful chart that shows age-standardized mortality rates. The report includes this discussion of the age-standardized statistics: “Age-standardised mortality rates (ASMRs) are a better measure of mortality than the number of deaths, as they account for the population size and age structure.” This is figure 3 from the report:
The exact figures for 2020 are 1,236.7 males and 894.2 females.
For comparison, the mortality rates for 2009 are the closest: 1,229.7 males and 886.6 females.
As can be seen from the ONS statistics above, the mortality rate is very slightly higher than in 2009 and is lower than in 2008.
No reference or academic study is needed to point out that there was no health crisis in the UK in either 2008 nor 2009. Indeed, these were considered perfectly normal years. This is very worrying data if considered in relation to the pandemic response. There have been many criticisms of the most extreme measures such as lockdowns, but even these critiques have been predicated on the belief that the pandemic was going to result in massive increases in mortality. According to the ONS data, no such massive increase took place. Instead, there was an uptick leading to 2008–09 mortality rates.
Unfortunately, this is not the whole story. At the start of the UK’s response to the pandemic, the government ordered the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) to make room in hospitals by removing anyone from a hospital that could be removed. The policy was called COVID-19 Hospital Discharge Service Requirements (C19HDSR) and the policy document can be found here. The subtitle of the report is ‘Why Not Home, Why Not Today?’ and this captures the spirit of the policy. It details the conditions under which patients should be discharged and the roles of the various actors in the policy.
The first point of note in the C19HDSR is that it does not refer to testing requirements for covid before discharge. Annex A provides the conditions under which patients should not be discharged and being covid positive is not included in the criteria. The policy document states that care homes should be filled with discharged patients. There is even an additional document for patients to read when going into aged care (see here). There is no reference to requirements for testing before release into aged care homes.
Although the NHS bureaucracy denied that significant numbers of covid-positive patients were being discharged under C19HDSR without covid testing, this was later shown to be untrue in a later study by Healthwatch and the British Red Cross (see here). The study researchers surveyed and interviewed 590 patients discharged under C19HDSR, and included whether the patients were tested for covid before discharge and whether they received their results before discharge. The two figures below show the figures from their research (from pp. 28–29):
Although the figures are from a sample of only 590 patients, they indicate that, at the very least, large numbers of patients were being forcibly discharged from hospitals without anyone knowing their covid status. The UK hospital ward system would be an ideal environment for the transmission of covid, with large numbers of people living close together in communal wards. At present, there is no further data on how many patients were discharged into aged care homes who were covid positive. However, given the data from Healthwatch and the British Red Cross, it would be reasonable to say that there must have been very many. In consideration that aged care homes are filled with the most covid-vulnerable populations, and involve considerable degrees of communal living, the policy likely very significantly contributed to the overall mortality rate in 2020.
When considering the ONS age-adjusted mortality statistics in conjunction with the policy of C19HDSR, it should be apparent that there is a big problem with the way that covid has been characterized, at the very least in the UK. It is not possible to say how much of the uptick in mortality was government policy related, but this adds a further significant question mark about the narrative surrounding the lethality of covid.
As stated, this is just the case of the UK in 2020. Nevertheless, this is a modern Western country that is supposed to have been hard-hit by covid in 2020. There is no reason to believe that it is some special outlier.
The implications of this data are very difficult. Even for individuals that may be very cynical about government, the data suggests that governments have acted in the most extraordinary ways based on what can only be called a hysteria. This hysteria has, across much of the Western world, seen unprecedented losses of basic rights, convulsions in healthcare systems with potentially terrible long-term results, disruption of education, and misery, loneliness, and mental health problems. As for the negative economic consequences, they will be with everyone for years to come. The effects are macro and micro, for example, the massive extension of government borrowing, printing money, and the decimation of small businesses.
If the data from the UK is broadly representative, the only way to sum up what has taken place, and is still taking place, is that the world is experiencing the first-ever global hysteria. After all, 2008 was a perfectly normal year.
Mark Avis is an academic in a New Zealand university and writes on the culture wars, politics, geopolitics, and economics at his website markavis.org.
‘Hypocrite’ Joe Biden Caught Violating DC’s Mask Mandate At Georgetown Restaurant
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | October 18, 2021
As children across the country are forced to cover their faces for hours at a time to attend school, President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill were caught on camera flouting DC’s mask mandates at an upscale Georgetown restaurant, Fiola Mare (whose mask policy they were also violating).

In a video posted Sunday night, the Bidens can be seen leaving the restaurant as employees in the background are dutifully masked up – a ‘fuck you, plebs’ not seen since the Met Gala event last month.
Wearing masks indoors was made mandatory in DC after Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser reinstated the policy in July after the delta variant began to surge.
“Per CDC guidance and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s executive order, all individuals over age 2 are required to wear a mask indoors, regardless of vaccination status. Masks must be always worn while in our restaurants, except while eating and drinking. Thank you for understanding,” reads Fiola Mare’s website.
Meanwhile…

Headlines designed to frighten women into having the jab
By Sally Beck | TCW Defending Freedom | October 18, 2021
PREGNANT women who have not been dragooned into having a Covid jab must have been terrified by the headlines in many newspapers last Monday. A typical one read: ‘Pregnant women who have not had vaccine make up a FIFTH of the most ill Covid patients in intensive care, figures show’.
It makes it sound like one in five unvaccinated pregnant women are in intensive care – but it’s not true. It’s a cynical misrepresentation of the figures, presumably to scare women into taking the experimental vaccines.
Pregnant women are the minority of patients on ICU. The number of non-pregnant patients dying with a Covid diagnosis on ICU is ten times higher, and more of that cohort are likely to have been vaccinated. And what none of the news stories discussed was the risk to pregnant women who take the vaccine. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the government drugs watchdog, list 28 deaths in their pregnancy section which include miscarriages, foetal deaths and stillbirths post vaccination between August 26 and October 14, but do not make it clear whether the mother died alongside her baby. Currently, at least 480,000 women are pregnant and on October 8, there were only 14 pregnant women on ICU from a total of 890 male and female patients. That has now dropped to 13 (p 43). ICNARC_COVID-19_Report_2021-10-15.pdf.pdf Pregnant women in the 16 to 49 age range account for just 1.6 per cent of all patients in intensive care.
Respiratory problems and failure have always been the most common cause for pregnant women to need admission to ICU and pre-Covid more than 1 in 5 pregnant women on ICU were there for pneumonia. Historically, many pneumonias will have been due to influenza but more recently have been caused by Covid.
The data released by the NHS last week relate to pregnant women who have tested positive for Covid and are being supported by a machine bypassing their lungs which are too damaged by the disease to breathe. The extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine makes sure their blood is oxygenated and enables the body’s cells and organs to function properly.
The truth is that since July there have been 118 patients who needed an ECMO but only 20 were pregnant, less than a fifth. Of the 20 who were pregnant, 19 were recorded as unvaccinated. There have been no Covid patients supported by ECMO machines for the last two weeks (p 60).
There are more explanations for the figures. According to Dr Clare Craig, a member of HART Group (Health Advisory & Recovery Team), a group of highly qualified UK doctors, scientists and academics: ‘There are very few of these machines in the country. [Last reported figure was 15.] Prioritising pregnant women for such therapy would be a reasonable approach so the proportion receiving this care would not necessarily reflect the proportion of pregnant women who were sick on intensive care.’
The number of pregnant women who have died, according to official figures (Table 9, p 42) from the Intensive Care Audit National Research Centre (ICNARC), is minuscule compared to the total of 16- to 49-year-old deaths. From May 1 to October 8 this year, three pregnant women died (1.4 per cent), five recently pregnant women had died (2.9 per cent) compared with 127 women who were not pregnant (13.9 per cent). Since September 2020 only six pregnant women on ICU have died and 16 if you include recently pregnant women.
These figures clearly show that a minority of pregnant women end up on ICU.
Dr Craig said: ‘The mortality rate among pregnant women is one tenth of that of non-pregnant women aged 16-49 years.
‘Pregnancy comes with a small amount of risk which is illustrated by the pre-Covid figures. Around 300 pregnant women a year were admitted to ICU from about 640,000 births. This is about 1 in 2,000. A further 1,400 women who had recently been pregnant were also admitted per year. Together, these made up 14 per cent of intensive care admissions for all women aged 16-49 years of age. The admission rate since Covid had increased to 1 in 1,500 pregnant women compared with 1 in 4,000 non-pregnant women of childbearing age.
‘Last year, 1 in 3 of those who tested positive were asymptomatic and the number of positive PCR results are disproportionately high for women of childbearing age who are much more likely to be tested routinely as part of their antenatal care.
‘Other conditions have similar symptoms to Covid. There are 200 viruses that can cause a common cold which can also present with a cough. Pre-eclampsia symptoms include a severe headache and pain under the ribs. Testing on admission and repeated testing on ICU, in an environment where SARS-CoV-2 is likely to be present, can result in overdiagnosis.’
No one has escaped the effects of Covid completely, not even pregnant women. Dr Craig said: ‘Overall, deaths in women of childbearing age rose in spring and winter 2020 but have been at expected levels since.
‘So, to stress again, the risk of dying on ICU with a Covid diagnosis is ten times higher in the non-pregnant population, more of whom are likely to have been vaccinated.’
No Covid drug manufacturer has released details of studies into pregnant women receiving the vaccine, which means all information relating to expectant mothers is speculation. Pfizer do not complete theirs until December 2021.
The NHS say that the data comes from over 100,000 Covid vaccinations in pregnancy in England and Scotland, and a further 160,000 in the US – culled from the American V-Safe app, a self-reporting system for women who found themselves pregnant after taking the jab. None of the data are available to be scrutinised and neither set constitute a scientific study. However, Dr Edward Morris, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), said: ‘We do understand women’s concerns about having the vaccine in pregnancy, and we want to reassure women that there is no link between having the vaccine and an increased risk of miscarriage, premature birth or stillbirth.’
An obstetrics and gynaecology doctor, who advises the UK Medical Freedom Alliance, a team of medical professionals, academics, scientists, and lawyers; said: ‘These numbers are so far from good science that we could be put on notice of liability if something goes wrong with a mother’s pregnancy because of the vaccine.’
Data from Public Health England showed that more than 81,000 pregnant women have received the first dose of the Covid jab, and around 65,000 have had their second.
Pregnant women were first offered the vaccine in December 2020, if they were health or care workers or in an at-risk group. Since April 2021, pregnant women have been offered the vaccine as part of the standard age-based rollout of the vaccination programme. No births in pregnant women from the April cohort who received the vaccine will have been completed until January 2022. So there is no way to know how vaccinated pregnant women, who had the vaccine in their first trimester, will fare until then, and we only have limited data from women vaccinated in the second and third trimester.
COVID Vaccine Mandates Are Killing Aviation, Healthcare, Other Critical Services. Is It Intentional?
The Defender | October 15, 2021
The widespread hemorrhaging of experienced public- and private-sector employees — a “man-made disaster of historic proportions,” according to former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul — is hollowing out some of the most important public-facing professions in the country.
Although many factors are at play, COVID vaccine mandates are a significant contributor, with employers refusing to honor the option to refuse Emergency Use Authorization COVID vaccines that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) supposedly guaranteed.
The result has been the threatened or actual mass firing and resignation of thousands of unvaccinated workers in critical sectors like healthcare, policing, firefighting, education and aviation, with skilled and experienced workers prepared to “leave if that’s what it comes to” rather than take the risky shots.
Even though these departures are “drastically overwhelming employers’ ability to replace them,” many of the politicians and corporate executives pushing the mandates seem weirdly at ease with their policy.
This complacency begs the question: Is the sabotage of air travel, high-quality healthcare, first-responder capability and other core services an intentional step designed to further weaken Americans’ resilience and expand authoritarian controls?
Flying the friendly skies
In one of the most widely publicized recent examples of workforce havoc, Southwest Airlines had to ground 35% of its scheduled flights this past holiday weekend, less than a week after the carrier mandated COVID vaccines for all employees.
The airline’s feeble explanation — bad weather and other problems — left many stranded passengers “confounded … because weather was clear over most of the country, particularly near airports that had lots of delays and cancellations.”
As Paul wryly noted, “the weather problems that Southwest claims to be experiencing seem unique to that carrier.”
In “methinks they doth protest too much” fashion, the airline, the pilots union and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are telling the public that the flight upheaval had nothing to do with employee ire over the vaccine edict.
However, one news report indicated that on the Friday in question, only three of 35 pilots showed up for work at Southwest’s Jacksonville hub, suggesting the pilots — at least 50% of whom are unvaccinated — are “drawing a line in the sand.”
Other major airlines that have imposed mandates — JetBlue, American, United, Alaska, Frontier and Hawaiian Airlines — are also facing fierce employee pushback.
The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association has gone so far as to criticize the company’s mandate as a “bad move,” stating pilot fatigue is already at triple its historic levels, with flights “operating at a higher than normal operational risk.”
Seeking to reassure its employees, Southwest CEO Gary Kelly told ABC News in an interview after the travel kerfuffle, “we’re not going to fire any employees over this [vaccine mandates].” Kelly said Southwest would urge unvaccinated employees to “seek an accommodation.”
Certainly, further outflows of competent personnel unwilling to be jabbed would exacerbate understaffing problems — and increase airline customer risks.
Adverse events in mid-air?
Commercial airline executives and pilots would be well-advised to read the affidavit submitted in late September by Lt. Col. Colonel Theresa Long, M.D., brigade surgeon for the 1st Aviation Brigade in Ft. Rucker, Alabama. Long is “responsible for certifying the health, mental and physical ability and readiness for … nearly 4,000 individuals on flight status.”
The affidavit highlights serious concerns about vaccinated pilots’ fitness for duty in light of myocarditis and other cardiac risks linked to COVID injections — problems that potentially could cause pilots to die in mid-flight.
Military aviators, Long points out, must meet “the most stringent medical standards” in the entire military to be eligible for flight status. In the private sector, heart problems can cause pilots to lose their commercial airline license.
In Long’s view, it is highly likely that “all persons who have received a COVID-19 Vaccine are damaged in their cardiovascular system in an irreparable and irrevocable manner.”
Noting that she has ascertained development of “significant and aggressive systemic health issues” in multiple flight crew members within 48 hours of vaccination, Long described one particularly alarming case:
“I personally observed the most physically fit female soldier I have seen in over 20 years in the Army, go from collegiate-level athlete training for Ranger School, to being physically debilitated with cardiac problems, newly diagnosed pituitary brain tumor [and] thyroid dysfunction within weeks of getting vaccinated.”
Other military physician-colleagues, Long said, are also reporting “firsthand experience with a significant increase in the number of young soldiers with migraines, menstrual irregularities, cancer, suspected myocarditis and reporting cardiac symptoms after vaccination.”
For young and fit pilots, the conclusion is obvious: COVID vaccines “are more risky, harmful and dangerous than having no vaccine at all,” Long said.
Many members of the military have apparently reached similar conclusions. With only 62 deaths attributed to COVID during the entire pandemic — out of 2.1 million troops — hundreds of thousands of service members are not in compliance with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Nov. 2 deadline to be fully vaccinated.
In February, a poll found that 53% of active-duty personnel, spouses and veterans had no plans to get injected.
Long said military flight crews present “extraordinary risks,” not just to themselves, but also to others “given the equipment they operate, munitions carried thereon and areas of operation in close proximity to populated areas.”
Her recommendations? “[A]ll pilots, crew and flight personnel in the military service who … received any COVID-19 vaccination [should] be grounded” and the “[c]ompulsory SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination program should be immediately suspended.”
Where are we headed?
Far from being receptive to the attempts by Long and at least 15 of her colleagues to share their disturbing observations with military superiors, the physicians say they are being ignored, rejected, ostracized or met with “threats of punishment.”
Long therefore issued her affidavit under the Military Whistleblower Protection Act, fully cognizant of the “horrific repercussions” her whistleblowing may have on her “career, [her] relationships and life as an Army doctor.”
The Ft. Rucker brass’s lack of interest in the impact of the experimental vaccines on pilot health is puzzling in light of Government Accountability Office (GAO) analyses showing there are already acute shortages of military pilots.
In late September, Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw reminded the secretary of defense that military readiness is subpar and tweeted, “are you really willing to allow a huge exodus of experienced service members just because they won’t take the vaccine?”
With the U.S. mired in “the worst … healthcare labor crisis in memory,” the same question could be directed to hospital CEOs who seem willing to let go of sizeable proportions of employees — even if it means adopting drastic measures such as refusing patients, closing departments or leaving beds empty.
Fed up, 96% of union members working at Kaiser Permanente in California and Oregon just voted to go out on strike.
Notably, hospitals earned record windfall profits last year from COVID federal stimulus and Medicare add-ons for ventilator intervention, even as they furloughed, laid off or cut the pay of frontline health workers in the midst of a “pandemic.”
And this year, politicians like New York’s unelected governor seem blithely willing to let the experienced health workers who took those furloughs and pay cuts go, bringing in pinch-hitting National Guard members or imported foreign workers.
It may still be too soon to untangle the full array of corporate and political interests driving the counterproductive policies that are chasing out large swaths of competent health workers, first responders, aviation workers and service members — while demoralizing (or sickening via COVID injection) those who comply with mandates and remain.
One thing is for sure, however: COVID-19 vaccines increase the risk of blood clots and so does air travel, which could make flight personnel especially vulnerable. Members of the public who take to the skies would surely rather have an experienced unvaccinated pilot who is of the caliber of a Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger in the cockpit — rather than a “second-string” vaccinated pilot who could be at higher risk of dying in mid-flight.
© 2021 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.






