Covid Hospital Policies Endanger Lives — Guest Post by Sandy Szwarc

Covid Hospital Policies Endanger Lives — Guest Post by Sandy Szwarc

With everything Covid-Covid-Covid, medical professionals and the healthcare system have been ignoring good medicine and medical practices. Hospital policies enacted in response to Covid-19 scares have resulted in inexcusable surges of deadly and preventable hospital-caused infections.

Every patient entering the hospital to receive medical care for anything at all, and anyone entering a clinic with respiratory symptoms, was forced to undergo a Covid-19 PCR test – something that’s never been done in past viral outbreaks. These PCR tests are still not FDA-approved and are being used under “Emergency Use Authorization” issued more than a year and a half ago, and don’t differentiate Covid-19 from seasonal influenza infections. Virtually every respiratory infection, including pneumonia, tests positive for a viral component, hence more Covid-19 cases.

Yet Covid-19 has been treated differently than past respiratory influenza and cold viruses.

Doctors failed to prescribe appropriate antibiotics for the bacterial secondary infections that are what kill patients with pneumonia. They failed to prescribe antibiotics for outpatients patients and often ignored or failed to examine patients for symptoms that would normally be treated with antibiotics or prescribed prophylactic antibiotics. Fear of spreading Covid-19 was used as an excuse even among critically ill patients, for example, to not perform bronchoscopic cultures to identify pathogens and not perform other diagnostic procedures to look for other causes for respiratory symptoms (such pulmonary embolism or congestive heart failure) that would normally have been done.

A study just published on August 25, 2021 in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine addressed some of these concerns. Doctors at the University of Pittsburgh performed bronchoscopy tests on all ventilated Covid-19 patients in the ICU and found that shortly after admission, 21% of all patients put on a ventilator had community-acquired bacterial superinfections that were responsive to antibiotics, including Streptococcus and methicillin-sensitive Staph aureus. Bacterial superinfections increased to 44% of patients 48 hours or more later.

This study was done before current immunosuppressive therapies, leading the doctors to say that secondary infections may be higher now.

Covid-19 fears were used to eliminate the ability of many people, especially minorities, the poor and elderly, to see their doctor or a medical provider. Instead, Medicare pushed and paid for zoom and telehealth provided by any number of healthcare providers, with no audits by Medicare during the “public health emergency” and no evidence that virtual care was better than hands-on medicine.

Covid-19 hospital policies and legislation eliminated the usual licensing and training requirements for medical staff, supposedly necessary to increase staffing needed for the pandemic, resulting in more undertrained and foreign nurses and nonmedical professionals doing direct patient care. State politicians across the country eliminated licensure requirements for health practitioners, waiving licensing exam requirements for students close to graduation and allowing them practice, waiving and lowering clinical hours required in nursing education programs, waiving requirements for doctors’ supervision of nurse practitioners, removing continuing education and other requirements for license renewal, permitting retired nurses with inactive licenses to practice, waiving background check requirements and other requirements for professionals coming in from outside, expanding roles of interns and unlicensed medical aids, and offering easy restricted licenses to use more foreign-trained and retired doctors.

Covid-19 hospital policies prohibited family and visitors, eliminating invaluable assistance in patient care and essential eyes and ears in preventing medical errors and patient neglect.

With Covid-19 hysteria, PPE (masks, gloves, gowns) was over-used and improperly used, leading to well-recognized risks of increasing the spread of infections. (It’s not uncommon for poorly educated or trained personnel to believe, for example, that gloves are protective and to not wash your hands as often, resulting in increased spread of germs, or to wear masks inappropriately and for too long, resulting in increased spread of germs.) Little squirts of alcohol hand sanitizer do not substitute for good handwashing, but are everywhere, while sinks sit idle.

With the focus on Covid-19, conventional infection control and prevention practices were thrown out the window. The results of all of these Covid-19 policies should have been anticipated.

A very disturbing study was just published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology from the National Healthcare Safety Network (CDC) — the largest Hospital-Acquired Infection surveillance system in the country. It found huge increases in hospital-caused infections in patients last year.

  • Central line-associated bloodstream infections: 47 percent increase
  • Ventilator-associated events: 44.8 percent increase
  • Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA): 33.8 percent increase
  • Catheter-associated urinary tract infections: 18.8 percent increase

Without getting into the minutia, in a single year, these increases wiped out nearly a decade of improvements in reducing hospital-acquired infections.

The researchers found a marked decline in antibiotic prescribing. The huge increase in hospital-acquired MRSA infections, for example, was investigated and found related to central lines and other devices improperly inserted and maintained. More than a quarter of all Covid-19 patients had Staph aureas infections, and more than half were MRSA.

The researchers did not report how many patients died from these largely preventable hospital-acquired infections. But they did conclude: “These data highlight the need to return to conventional infection prevention and control practices…”

As any medical professional knows, hospitals are always busier during the cold and flu season. But despite the Covid-19 marketing hype, hospitals were not appreciably busier last year than in past years. These appalling findings cannot be blamed on a coronavirus itself, but in the irresponsible reactions of medical professionals and hospitals.

There is no excuse for medical professionals to neglect their training and sound science, or their medical ethics, and turn the practice of medicine into theater to advance a political or marketing agenda.

Sandy Szwarc is a registered nurse.

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56 Comments

  1. Fr. John+

    How about the STUDIED ignorance of Ivermectin? This is a crime against humanity, and the people who have deep fixed this, deserve to Princess D, because Romans 1:32: “They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.”

    Videos and articles like this should be on the nightly news.
    https://rumble.com/vlpecw-the-story-of-ivermectin.html

    Exposes like this should cause Pfizer et al to be taken over by the state, and all profits distributed to those who died from the Quackcine!
    http://stateofthenation.co/?p=83763

    Journalists like this should have their thumbs cut off, for peddling such EVIL LIES! Our justice system is dead.
    http://stateofthenation.co/?p=83750

    Arise, O Lord, and smite thine enemies…. starting with the Anti-pope Bergoglio. ANATHEMA!

  2. Briggs

    All,

    I disagree, in a way, with our guest. You can’t tell the flu-covid symptoms apart easily, but you can with testing. Excepting test mistakes, the tests for both are different, and the results unambiguous.

  3. Sheri

    I saw yesterday that we test CATTLE for anthrax with a PCR test so they can be isolated, but the test is NOT considered definative and the anthrax NOT verified until a lab culture shows anthrax. I think we need to consider using veterinarians since they still understand REAL science.

    And yes, they test for any entrance to the hospital I was supposed to have a procedure, and if I did not go in the day before, they would test the day of the test and cancel the procedure if the test was positive. I ended up not having the procedure (not due to the testing requirement).

    They are giving free “wild guess” flu shots with your Covid SHOT (not vexxine). They have zero idea what to put in them since they declared Covid killed flu.

    Covid19 is a POLITICAL DISEASE. Sars Cov2 is MEDICAL ILLNESS.

    Remember, the appropriate treatment for Covid is stay home until you turn blue. Then go hospital for further infections to pick up.

    The “little squirts of hand sanitizer” date back to at least April 2019 when I was hospitalized for a broken wrist rebuild. The place was filthy. In 2015. I was in 4 times and it was neat and clean. This filth preceded Covid by at least a year. I avoid hospitals at all costs now, knowing what a pit they are.

    Money is the reason for medical people to neglect their training—if the hospital makes more money, so does the staff. Medicine is often about money, not patience. That has been true for decades. As has grifter Congressmen who are the sole support of the ONE hospital allowed to exist and expand in the state. Those are more common that you realize.

    Ivermectin is for livestock, which is why we give it to Afghan refugees. They are considered livestock. Plus, they can’t come in with measles, but Covid is GREAT AND COME RIGHT IN.

    Briggs: No one, as far as I can tell, has ever verified the PCR test and I am sure they don’t intend to. Finding a high rate of false positives would be a death nell to their fear campaign. They don’t even back it with a lab test like they did early in the “pandemic”.

    All of this makes perfect sense when you realize the elites want you dead. Notice that NONE of them have died…

  4. John

    Just a personal anecdote from a general hospital in Massachusetts, where my wife gave birth last month.

    First, the state department of health kept a mask mandate for all healthcare settings. Signs all over the hospital call it a “universal” mask mandate, meaning you’re not supposed to take it off, even in a private room. Fortunately, most staff that we encountered ignore this, and don’t ask patients and visitors to mask up when they walk in.

    Secondly, new moms are not allowed to get up and walk around the maternity floor, which is so important to their recovery, both physically and mentally. If they want ice chips or water, they have to ring the nurse’s station.

    Worst of all is the visitors’ policy, which was posted all over the place. To be fair, it’s not as bad as I assume it was a year ago. You can have visitors, oneat a time (grandparents can’t visit together), with a maximum of 4 a day (husbands don’t count). The only exception to the limit is when families need to meet to discuss end of life decisions. The policy that admits of no exceptions, as far as I could see, is that no one under 18 can visit for any reason. I left there with the belief that a dying person with minor children would be barred from bidding them farewell. This is inhuman, but is probably a symbol for the general state of healthcare in the formerly civilized world.

  5. Hagfish Bagpipe

    “Covid Hospital Policies Endanger Lives”

    How about, “Covid Hospital Policy: Medical Mass Murder for Fun and Profit!”.

    Multiple ‘Hospital Whistleblower’ vids make plain how the scam works: every hospital admittance requires bogus PCR test, now you’re a “covid” patient even though you might have come in with broken leg and aren’t sick. The important thing is EVERYONE IS COVID because Uncle Sick pays out big bucks for useless and dangerous treatments and even bigger for “covid” deaths. If you are an actual covid or flu or pneumonia patient you don’t get treated with proven safe, cheap, effective stuff such as HCQ/azithromycin/zinc, ivermectin, vitamin D, etc., since none of those are approved by the medical murderers, but they did approve Remdesivir, a useless, kidney-destroying, Big Pharma patent-poison administered only by IV in hospital abattoirs. And when that fails, or through shear neglect you decline, they ventilate you until dead. “Covid Death” = hospital Ka-Ching!

    Saw recent vid; hospital upstate NY will no longer deliver babies because staff quit over death-jab mandate. The vid shows the august members of the hospital board, these medical mandarins, experts who follow the SCIENCE!, 11 adults in a conference room obediently wearing their useless masks. Tells me everything I need to know about modern medicine. If you get sick stay the hell out of the hospital, and stay away from doctors, unless you know for sure yours isn’t one of the pod-people killers.

    Not all doctors are crazed, mass-murdering sociopaths, but you have to search for them. One good resource is the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, lots of good info from doctors who aren’t trying to kill you. Dr. Sherri Tenpenny is a great resource for covid info, alternative treatments, and podcast interviews she does with interesting guests. She emphasizes Christian spirituality as a necessary component since we are battling not just with a viral disease here but against those evil “principalities and powers” of which we were warned long ago. Jesus Christ has even more power than ivermectin, wiggas, so be not afraid.

  6. Kenan Meyer

    enjoy Karry Mullis explain the test he invented and was awarded a Nobel prize for, as long as Youtube has not yet cleaned out everything not approved by “fact-checkers”

    https://youtu.be/-ueVTcOSD1k

  7. Dennis

    This past 18 months has laid bare the utter corruption of “public health” agencies and the health care “profession” (an older world, for what is now just the “health care “industry” – a big business and nothing more. Most are captives of radical ideological agendas (witness even medical schools corrupting the study biology to placate “gender” theorists), wholly owned by Gates Foundation and Big Pharma money, and practitioners of what were once called “medical arts” are now mostly just shills for their paymasters.

  8. Rudolph Harrier

    “Studied ignorance” of Ivermectin is exactly correct. I have a relative who is a doctor, and at a recent gathering he was mocking the idea of anyone ever taking Ivermectin. Not just as a treatment for COVID-19, he talked about it as an unsafe poison that no doctor would ever suggest as a treatment for anything.

    Now I’m not a doctor, and I am sure that my relative knows a lot more about medicine than I ever will, since he is a doctor. If, say, he looked at a rash and said it was shingles but I had thought it might just be a reaction to an ointment, I would definitely get myself checked out for shingles. I don’t know enough about medicine to confidently say if Ivermectin is or isn’t an effective prophylactic against COVID-19.

    But I can still say that Ivermectin is not a poison and is a reasonable medicine to use in many cases, especially as a treatment against parasites. The creators won a Nobel Prize for medicine and Ivermectin is listed on the WHO’s list of essential medicines! A doctor could not be so dismissive of it unless he actively sought to be ignorant of it.

    But we are in a world of extremes only. A right-thinking doctor can’t say “Ivermectin is a highly effective anti-parasitical drug which is safe for use in humans, but its efficacy against COVID-19 is unproven and I would advise against using it until more is known.” He must say instead “Ivermectin is highly dangerous and has no medical benefits, and if you think otherwise you are a crazy Trump supporter.”

  9. Leo

    The protocols are dictated from the top. My previous experience was that doctors worked for the best interest of patients, but now it seems that they are being pushed to put the wishes of someone else ahead.

    See https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=243448 for example. The whole market-ticker site is worth exploring as well. It complements the excellent information here.

  10. Briggs

    Leo,

    Thanks. You’re the second person recommending this site in the last week.

  11. Dennis

    “Not just as a treatment for COVID-19, he talked about it as an unsafe poison that no doctor would ever suggest as a treatment for anything”. QED. For any doctor to say it is not a valid treatment for ANYTHING, is another example of medical corruption – docs just spouting official propaganda with no regard for genuine patient care, and no indication of any real intellectual curiosity either.

    Even Dr. Robert Malone, who invented mRNA recently said he used Ivermectin after lingering Covid symptoms and had great results! In much of the world it is sold over-the-counter, and an ex-Pfizer executive Mike Yeadon said he considers it safer than Tylenol. The US medical establishment like things like Ivermectin because they are out of patent and cheap, so they don’t ring the cash registers as effectively as pushing dangerous experimental new jabs and drugs.

  12. John T Dzialo

    Briggs:

    This just may be THE most important Covid piece that you have done. It crystalizes what anyone who has sought health care during the pandemic instinctively knew already: Basic, proven and essential health measures have been sacrificed on the Covid altar.

    It definitively explains why Flu cases have disappeared……..doesn’t it!

  13. Shecky R

    with that mentality one suspects Sandy will be dead from covid within 154 days….

  14. Hagfish Bagpipe

    Briggs: “…second person recommending this site [Denniger’s Market Ticker] in the last week.”

    Karl Denniger is great, thought you knew about him, Boss. He’s a bit of a polymath; markets and financial stuff, software, medical, automobile repair, among others. Strong opinions clearly expressed and with a good mind for facts/figures/data. Like you he specializes in fine-grained critiques of certain specialties, pointing out just how wrong-headed, dim-witted, and corrupt things are, and yet the Stupid Parade marches on, to great cheers from the crowd, and to Karl’s bleeped exasperation. You two would have a lot to talk about.

  15. Briggs

    Hagfish,

    Nope, didn’t know. I lead a quiet sheltered life, unaware of larger things of life.

  16. Don B

    Speaking of health experts killing people….

    Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of the mRNA vaccination technique, posted this on Twitter (which I copied on 9/11/2021):

    “I have seen reliable estimates that there have been at least 450,000 excess US deaths attributable to USG blocking early use of ivermectin and HCQ.”

    Presumably USG = US Government.

  17. Jerry

    In my observations from the past year, I can say without a doubt that the medical care industry – hospitals and doctors offices – were appallingly ignorant about the Covid-19 virus and in the protocols used in relation to it. To anyone with a whiff of common sense, it was laughable.
    In retail stores and restaurants, you can argue that businesses just don’t know or have experience in dealing with such things, but with doctors and medical professionals? Who is teaching these idiots?

  18. Sheri

    John: That was the policy years ago. Only recently has it changed. My niece has to be smuggled into ICU so she could see her mother was not dead like a playmate told here. I have read of many dying alone because only family was allowed in and this was in the 60’s and 70’s. So things really only changed changed to the very old normal. My father was not allowed in the delivery room

    Dennis: “Not just as a treatment for COVID-19, he talked about it as an unsafe poison that no doctor would ever suggest as a treatment for anything”. So we are poisoning the Afghan refugees?

    While I KNEW an expensive drug would be “required”, I had no idea how effectively this Covid would be used as a murder weapon. I also had no idea how much the medical community hated the people it served.

    I’m not sure if home births are on the rise, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Babies have been born at home for centuries. Complication require a hospital. I can just see my niece screaming hysterically that she will not be Covid tested—while either she or the baby or both die on the sidewalk. I have to admit, I would admire her dedication to her beliefs (No, it wouldn’t happen. Her morality ends where death or inconvenience begin……)

    ALL medications used agains Covid and all procedures WERE EXPERIMENTAL. IT WAS A NEW VIRUS. Where was the government to pull the ventilators, etc, because no one new if it made it better or worse. AGAIN, ALL PROCEDURES AND DRUGS WERE EXPERIMENTAL yet they were allowed until politics said no. THERE IS NO SCIENCE.

  19. Dennis

    “So we are poisoning the Afghan refugees?” Huh? I was responding to Rudolph post quoting an anti-Ivermectin doc.

  20. philemon

    At least some Australian physicians seem to resent being told what they can and cannot prescribe:

    https://joannenova.com.au/2021/09/tga-bans-largely-safe-drug-because-people-might-not-get-vaxed/

    “Oh, noes! People might not get the vexxine!” Well, that’s because they shouldn’t. The vexxines should never have been approved at all. The adverse events are piling up, and there are other disturbing indications.

    https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=243546

    Friend has 12 year old, formerly completely healthy grandson, fully vexxined, because parents didn’t listen to their mother, came down, in July, with now suspected necrotic pneumonia, of all things. Antibiotics weren’t working. Doctor’s not linking it to vexxine because hospital policy. Bet this one doesn’t make it to VAERS. Parents seem to be having some vexxine remorse.

  21. philemon

    The US Gov can turn on a dime, claim the vexxine manufacturers lied to them and faked data, etc. Give the lawyers’ their fair share. CYA.

    If, the U.S. population is 50% vexxined, and black people and Latino people are less than 30%, TPTB don’t have a leg to stand on. They’re going to be looking for the exits. And if those exits don’t exist because they’ve barricaded themselves in…

  22. John

    Sheri: I was not saying this is strictly an ICU policy, but a whole hospital policy. Preventing anyone under 18 from visiting any hospital patient is most certainly a post-covid policy. I am only 41, so I can’t speak to what was happening in the 60’s and 70’s, but I can recall having no problem visiting my grandfather in the ICU in 1994 (he’s still alive today!). I have visited many people for other reasons in more recent times, and can only recall even having to check in at the front desk if I was going to the ICU. Our middle son was born in January of 2020, at a maternity hospital, and he had to spend 10 days in the NICU. His older brother was able to come and visit all he wanted. He just had to have his temp taken on the way in. Things aren’t as bad as they were a year ago, but they are worse than at any time in my life, without a doubt.

  23. Charles

    Why did the comments turn into a discussion of Ivermectin? I fear many readers missed the author’s urgent point.

    Most certainly, the medical management of “Covid-19” is political and has become a matter of “hospital policy” (i.e. politics and profit) over good science and medicine. (Hence, rigid treatment protocols that refuse and ignore alternative treatments, like Ivermectin.) And, most definitely, the Covid-19 PCR tests are bunk – as she noted they are still under EUA.

    But Sandy was NOT saying that a coronavirus should be treated with antibiotics, as some appear to have mistakenly taken her point, and even attacked her mentality.

    Of course, the symptoms of Covid-19 are virtually indistinguishable from influenza and the SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests are mostly false positives and are no measure of infection. But old-fashioned culture and sensitivity laboratory tests DO diagnose dangerous secondary infections, like bacteria and other pathogens. However, doctors are failing to do these once-routine diagnostic tests and procedures in fear of “spreading covid.”

    So, treatable conditions and dangerous bacterial infections are being missed ? by the time patients are intubated and in ICU, almost 1 in 4 have treatable bacterial superinfections. It’s terrifying, that after just 2 days in ICU, the percentage of bacterial superinfections had more than doubled!

    Compound that with the feigned rush to increase staffing “numbers” with cheaper labor and lowering the quality of medical personnel; eliminating hands-on-medical care in favor of more profitable telehealth; ridiculous PPE theater with nurses wearing homemade decorated cotton masks; and the abandonment of basic infection control practices … iatrogenic infections have skyrocketed.

    John T. Dzialo got it. This should be front page news. Hospitals are killing people in this ridiculous covid hysteria.

    Medical professionals are letting politicians and bureaucrats dictate the practice of medicine. And it’s only getting worse by the day, as the best, most conscientious professionals are quitting rather than be part of what is happening.

  24. Roy Hugh

    This article explains that hospitals have abandoned standard treatments and protocols. Why? Covid? We know that antibiotics are not used for a viral infection but secondary infections used to be treated, normally with antibiotics. A 33% increase in MRSA, yikes.

  25. Joy

    Every patient entering the hospital to receive medical care for anything at all, and anyone entering a clinic with respiratory symptoms, was forced to undergo a Covid-19 PCR test – something that’s never been done in past viral outbreaks. “
    “Forced” something which does not happen in any civilised nation. So some exaggeration there. A patient must be sectioned under the mental health act in order to be subjected to anything against their will, like self discharge. There are ethics in mental health scenarios too! Believe it or not. No use pretending you’re in a prison camp.
    They certainly all received tamiflu during the swine flu epidemic if symptoms indicated a potential infection in the early stages of the epidemic. Once information is known for certain and knowledge develops, clinical decision making changes as you know if you will remember given that you are a registered nurse.

    These PCR tests are still not FDA-approved and are being used under “Emergency Use Authorization” issued more than a year and a half ago, and don’t differentiate Covid-19 from seasonal influenza infections.

    This is false. Influenza has a specific test.
    Covid 19 is tested in the lab to a high degree of accuracy which is more than sufficient for purpose. In the early stages testing was only sufficient for public health recording information and not for individual clinical decision making. Any staff confused about that were out of their depth.

    “Virtually every respiratory infection, including pneumonia, tests positive for a viral component, hence more Covid-19 cases.”

    This is written so vaguely. It is false, since testing is clear enough on both counts. Bacterial and viral pneumonias are easily recognisable from radiology (X-Rays/CT scans) given skilled radiological reading coupled with direct clinical knowledge of the patient. Decisions are NEVER Ade in isolation unless the scenario is in a cave or top of a mountain without normal access to resources. (Out on the street, for example, trying to reuses someone)
    The assumption is relying on someone with nothing else but the “test” result and a load of numbers on a page. Typical statisticians error. At this stage I take it as deliberate foggary of the situation when people confuse clinical settings with what researchers state in a paper and pretend there’s some kind of direct evidential value for any given scenario. Each case is taken on its merit. Clinical reasoning is an exercise in prioritisation, not top trumps with papers, as the conspirators tend to imply.

    Yet Covid-19 has been treated differently than past respiratory influenza and cold viruses.

    For reasons ;which everybody understands except those who think it’s a conspiracy! So it is begging the question, or at least a circular statement. Is it not okay that any given new situation may warrant a different kind of approach? Especially in infancy of a new discovery or disease? If not why not?

    Doctors failed to prescribe appropriate antibiotics for the bacterial secondary infections that are what kill patients with pneumonia.

    This is an assertion of a very general kind with a broad brush which is symptomatic of poor quality care. Antibiotics are often prescribed, sometimes inappropriately, often with no effect as they do not work for several immunocompromised or antibiotic resistant bugs. Spoken as one who’s job it was for a few years to collect sputum samples from patients! Good assessment and diagnosis is essential, covid doesn’t alter anything. Most sputum samples are not collected bronchoscopicly.

    They failed to prescribe antibiotics for outpatients patients and often ignored or failed to examine patients for symptoms that would normally be treated with antibiotics or prescribed prophylactic antibiotics.

    Same point.

    Fear of spreading Covid-19 was used as an excuse even among critically ill patients, for example, to not perform bronchoscopic cultures to identify pathogens and not perform other diagnostic procedures to look for other causes for respiratory symptoms (such pulmonary embolism or congestive heart failure) that would normally have been done.

    Your assertions are without substance. Essentially your complaint could be that the standards of care are not good enough in general. Training is not good enough. I could agree if that is how you describe the situation in your nation. Yet I know three people who have worked in the US, two of which were in respiratory specialties. At the largest hospital in the US apparently but in the mid/late nineties. So maybe standards have dropped through the floor?

    Covid-19 fears were used to eliminate the ability of many people, especially minorities, the poor and elderly, to see their doctor or a medical provider. “

    In the US. Yet elsewhere great effort was taken to ensure this effect was minimal. It was always easy to for-see and always on the agenda for mitigation of INDIRECT deaths
    Trump tried, to keep the rhetoric down and play a calm, straight bat but eventually I believe he gave way a bit to the conspiracists who helped him to lose confidence of the floating voters.

    A very disturbing study was just published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology from the National Healthcare Safety Network (CDC) — the largest Hospital-Acquired Infection surveillance system in the country. It found huge increases in hospital-caused infections in patients last year.

    This is not surprising since hospital acquired infection is always high on the list of venues for catching infection! In a very infectious epidemic covid was the primary disease being spread, with other bugs following up the rear as some of your essay has admitted.
    So one would expect the following list to increase in a very overstretched health care setting, training aside:
    Nothing disturbing, if you are familiar with infectious disease control and apply common sense.
    Central line-associated bloodstream infections: 47 percent increase
    Ventilator-associated events: 44.8 percent increase
    Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA): 33.8 percent increase
    Catheter-associated urinary tract infections: 18.8 percent increase

    Without getting into the minutia, in a single year, these increases wiped out nearly a decade of improvements in reducing hospital-acquired infections.
    Yes, also not surprising, given the state of play in a lot of hospitals. That is if you do believe what was shown on TV and don’t subscribe to the crazy notion, offered by many (here), that it has all been staged!
    When staff, equipment, time are stretched, the bugs don’t take a break. Simple.
    One way or another the falsehood of information flowing and repeated freely by ignorant non initiated individuals, has added to the fear, potentially and thence bad decision making all around the land, from individuals to medical staff and everybody in between . If people follow bias instead of their head, or give way to politics over truth, they are on a road to a bad outcome. The same would be letting the dice fall where they may.

    There is no excuse for medical professionals to neglect their training and sound science, or their medical ethics, and turn the practice of medicine into theatre to advance a political or marketing agenda.
    Sandy Szwarc is a registered nurse.

    couldn’t agree more.
    Truth matters but objectivity is still essential. If Biden makes a statement, it doesn’t make it false. Although it would be rational to assume he were wrong in the absence of all other information. It’s the last part which people forget.
    Well trained staff don’t rely on papers to tell them things they already know about. Nor do they take lessons on clinical practice from non qualified individuals.
    Be careful who uses your anger at your colleagues evident incompetence. When you put your head above the parapet. Those who put you forward will pretend you’re not there…Don’t do it Sandy.

  26. philemon

    Joy: “Don’t do it Sandy.” Joy doesn’t do English punctuation properly, does she?

    “Be careful who uses your anger at your colleagues evident incompetence. When you put your head above the parapet. Those who put you forward will pretend you’re not there…” Gosh, that almost sounds like a threat, doesn’t it?

    Also from Joy: “Like an oil change! It’s the same kind of reason why babies eyes turn from blue/violet to boring colours after a time. Toxins deposited in the iris.”

    Yep, you heard it here first, folks. “Toxins deposited in the iris.”

  27. sandy

    Tragically, Joy didn’t read the papers (and their references) that were linked to in the piece, whose medical doctors and researchers brought forward the fact bronchoscopic and other medical diagnostics haven’t been done during the pandemic, for fear of spreading Covid, and discussed the inappropriate use of antibiotics during the pandemic. Nor has she read or understood the published statements from the CDC concerning the PCR test for Covid-19 and influenza. Nor did she read the statement from CMS Medicare/Medicaid concerning telehealth and medical care access. At hospitals across the country, it has been written extensively how patients are not admitted for medical care without a Covid-19 PCR test. Patients do have the choice to not get care. To most people, that is pretty much force or coercion or whatever term you want to use.

    I suspect most medical professionals would disagree with Joy and be very concerned about the huge surge of HAIs. It is not something to disregard as of no importance. Her insertion of Presidential politics into this issue was odd. But I admit that most of her comment was undecipherable.

    The CDC report was important to share in order to help people (both professionals and patients and their families) as it illustrated just one consequence of inappropriate responses to fears without regard to good evidence. As quoted in Becker’s Hospital Review: “The unfortunate reality is that in one year we lost nearly a decade of progress against HAIs like central line-associated bloodstream infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and ventilator-associated events,” Ann Marie Pettis, BSN, RN, president of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, said in a statement about the CDC report.

    She is a BSN, RN, too.

  28. Joey Zamboni

    My wife works in a large hospital…

    She recently applied for & was (surprisingly) granted a religious exemption to getting the dreaded virus vaccination, on the grounds of the companies use of the sin of abortion to develop the vaccines…

    She just did the same for the flu shot, for the same reasons…

    I would say, 95% if not 100% of the nurses she works with are fully vaccinated, falsely believing that if they got the jab they could lose the mask etc…

    They constantly talk disparagingly of the *unvaccinated*…

    My wife has been with the hospital for over 20 years & can’t believe how far the healthcare profession has fallen & so quickly…

    She’s hoping for a buyout as she is at the top of the wage scale…

    It’s ALL about MONEY at her hospital, at the expense of their workers & even their patients…

    Either way she’s done by the end of the year…

    We have lost almost all trust in the American healthcare system…

  29. Dennis

    “At hospitals across the country, it has been written extensively how patients are not admitted for medical care without a Covid-19 PCR test. Patients do have the choice to not get care. To most people, that is pretty much force or coercion or whatever term you want to use.”

    Indeed. My mom had an out-patient procedure done a few weeks ago, and four days later was having trouble breathing and pain in her left arm and leg and went to an immediate care center, which then took her to ER in an ambulance. She was required to get a Covid test as part of admitting her, and they then discovered that she had pulmonary embolism (clots were listed as potential side effects of the procedure she had, though I’m convinced a large contributing factor was also the fact that she’d had the damn Pfizer jab, and clotting is a huge problem with these mRNA shots. Sadly, because of the intervening procedure, we’ll never know conclusively why she got the clot – and the doctors were not even remotely interested in connecting anything at all to the jab. She was even told, wrongly by one doctor – a blatant lie – that there are no known clotting issues with the Pfizer or Moderna jabs, only AZ & J&J).

    So, despite presenting no symptoms of Covid, and despite being jabbed, if she’d refused the test, her only option would have been to die of a blot clot, as she would have been refused admittance (I presume she’d still have gotten treatment if she’d been + for Covid – I guess they’d have just put her in some hazmat suit or some other BS). And, of course, I was prevented from even visiting her for the two days she was there because of their continued draconian face muzzle theatre rules (Which doctors and nurses of all people should know is BS).

  30. Dennis

    “We have lost almost all trust in the American healthcare system…”

    Many such cases!

  31. brad.tittle

    @ Sandy @ Joy

    I just talked to a clerk who is worried about her daughter being in school where another child just tested positive for covid. Joy must have missed the missive from the CDC saying that they have never provided any COVID samples for the people creating the tests for COVID to test against. The clerk was worried. She does her job well. She takes care of her children well. Explaining the difference between a PCR test used for Covid and a Flu test isn’t going to happen with any certainty.

    I have 0 problems sending my kid to school unvaccinated. I have 0 problems with getting rid of all masks outside of very specific situations. I cannot go through life successfully trying to protect against every eventuality. I had to install a camera system around my house because of a neighbor problem I was having. The big lesson in the cameras is trying to find the “activity” when you need to find it after the fact. I knew the exact time that an event happened. It took me an hour to isolate it in the recordings. The cameras are still in place. The sign that says “24 hour recording” is there. I do not review the videos ever. Takes too much time. I am not going to out source it either.

    https://protect-public.hhs.gov/pages/national-testing

    Here is a link to something that should scare everyone. Look at overall Occupancy. That this number isn’t higher should cause you to pause. Hospitals were not designed to have excess capacity. When occupancy gets below 80%, you might see administrators starting to get twitchy. That twitchiness has the administrator keeping a really close eye on the hospitals bank balance and whether or not the Accounts Receivables are aging well or poorly.

    Dots highlighted in RED on this chart are hospitals that have a chance. Dots marked in yellow and green are ones that you are worried about.

    We are in trouble. It is not overcrowded hospitals that are indicative of the trouble.

  32. brad tittle

    @Sandy is trying to point at the problem as directly as she can. There is no conspiracy. There is only procedure and measurements. But then we have measurements in place. If the measurement is quiet, it might be trusted. If the measurement is tied to revenue or action, we have to be careful.

    Mantra of Managers: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”
    Unfortunately side effect: “If you measure it, you will be gamed!”

    If gaming starts, the measurements are suspect.

    Just heard a story from a person who was fully vaccinated. His roommate tested positive for covid. He is medical worker. He started showing symptoms. He tried to get treatment, they would not test him because he was vaccinated. He hopped through a couple of hoops and found the right doctor who GAMED the system. He said “You are presumptive positive” and then issued scripts. Apparently the Monoclonal Antibodies worked for him almost immediately.

    But he could not get them by going directly through the system. He had to find someone who could play the game.

    Saw a different story of someone who needed kidney surgery. That person got into the hospital playing the presumptive positive game also. They could be admitted for Covid and then treated for kidney problems. They couldn’t be admitted for Kidney problems.

    My nephew had an accident a couple of weeks ago. He dumped is motorcycle and had road rash. He tried to get into the clinic, but the testing folks wouldn’t let him. He went home and treated himself.

    For the last 15 years, I have muttered that we are going to need lawyers in place to help us navigate the ‘universal healthcare’ system being put in place. You need to visit the lawyer with your symptoms and get advice on how to present the symptoms to the doctor in the right way so that you will not be denied service or to get the service you need.

    Not long ago, there was an entire underground advice system on how to get a Medical Marijuana card. “Just say …. to your doctor and you can get one!”

    I am going to make a prediction that Sandy has a reasonable chance of know what I am pointing at and Joy may not get it.

  33. Joy

    Philemon,
    Yak’s milk’s pink!

    Are you really still upset over the iris? You were shown to be wrong and continue to look for irrelevant concerns about my typing and punctuation *which doesn’t suit your style) as if that is somehow a refutation of an argument.
    Like `i said, you’re a troll. Probably a regular commenter who is currently using two names.
    And incidentally the blog hasn’t been running for as many years as you claim to have been reading, so you’re lying yet again.

    Take a look at the magazine article on eye colour. You might learn something.
    Iron Is a toxin, it is a heavy metal. Same for cyanide, which is found in saliva!
    Simply look up what is meant by the word toxin.

    My English is fine. My editing has issues as do I, with spending too much time in editing when perfectly written and presented responses actually receive the same kind of ridiculous responses so as to make lengthy editing not worth the trouble.

    So far you’ve been wrong on each of the, erm, three? Points you’ve upset yourself about.
    Great distraction tactic, banging on about English where there are typos, very silly on your part.

  34. Joy

    Tragically, Joy didn’t read the papers (and their references) that were linked to in the piece, whose medical doctors and researchers brought forward the fact bronchoscopic and other medical diagnostics haven’t been done during the pandemic, for fear of spreading Covid, and discussed the inappropriate use of antibiotics during the pandemic.

    Tragically??? strange.
    No, you gave your opinion and said that broncospopiys were being put on hold. So are all sorts of routine screening for pathologies of a variety of kinds.
    Bronchoscopic sputum sampling and cell culture is done for a variety of reasons and these do not have to do with treatment of routine infections. Perhaps in the US!
    Diagnosis of chest infection can be done without bronchoscopy.
    Treatment with antibiotics is mostly done on spec, meaning without anything but a guess or a use of common sense backed up by clinical knowledge of pathology, options available and some very rudimentary pieces of kit including auscultation.
    Congestive cardiac failure is fairly easy to distinguish from a chest infection and that is a pretty basic element of respiratory care and diagnosis. In CCF the fluid build up backs up leading to pleural effusion. This can be diagnoses on CXray or CT. with history taking, normal vital signs and auscultation.
    So your complaint about the standards of care may well have merit. What it says is that the service was not fit for purpose prior to the onset of the measures during the pandemic. This would-be be true of our care homes and many of the staff in district generals *these days. That is a quite separate matter than the issue of mitigation efforts with regards to infection control.
    On a previous post last year some time I remarked about the state of care homes and that the staffing is not up to the job in many of the private care homes, in particular, over here. What the covid situation has done is show up the weaknesses which were already there.
    Don’t mistake me for someone who is defending poor quality of care.
    There is a lot of arguing past people and deliberate or otherwise obtuse misunderstanding.
    My response was to your quotes as above.
    Had you asked me how hospitals will cope if there is a global pandemic?
    I would have said, “not a chance…badly. “
    The reasons I would give would be long and tedious but that really is a very separate matter from “what to do” in a global pandemic…or “how to make clinical public health decisions for the masses for best outcomes”.
    The best way to do well is to have a team of staff who each one on their won is highly competent and trained in independent working without reference to protocols, crib sheets, fear of reprisal from superiors, self confidence and so on. The system is only as good as the individual parts.
    ?I expect all health systems have similar weaknesses wherever the money is coming from. Healthcare is an eternal money pit. Still, when the enemy, in this case, a virus, attacks, everybody has to learn very fast and roll up their sleeves because the politicians and the armchair generals who are talking out of their hats aren’t going to help you day to day.

    In the UK there’s going to be a lengthy investigation and trawling over the ashes.

    Lessons will be learned as usual after the fact and when society decides it’s solved the problem things will slip again, into disrepair and the same kinds of things will happen.
    Individual responsibility is out of fashion today not just in health but in corporate setting.

    That won’t last for ever. The hard way or the easy way, sanity always prevails, as does the Truth

  35. philemon

    Joy: “Are you really still upset over the iris?”

    Only in so far as it displayed your ignorance.

  36. philemon

    “I am going to make a prediction that Sandy has a reasonable chance of know[ing] what I am pointing at and Joy may not get it.”

    Yep.

  37. philemon

    According to Joy: “Philemon,
    “Yak’s milk’s pink!”

    Joy, where do we start? There’s a yak somewhere that owns a bottle of pink milk? Is it a pink yak? The pink yak’s milk’s pink?

    Okay, there’s a myth that hippos have pink milk (they don’t), but yaks don’t either. Yak milk is milk-colored. It’s high in fat though.

    So, Ivermectin is good. We can agree on that.

  38. Rudolph Harrier

    Brad,

    I know several people who work at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, and they all tell me that the ICU beds are nearly at capacity. But that HHS page says that less than 70% of ICU are currently occupied, and less than 80% of total beds are currently occupied. Looks like normal operations to me, maybe even a little light.

    I don’t think that the Mayo employees are lying to me. I think they are just relaying information given to them from above. That is, they may have received an e-mail from an administrator saying something like “our beds are almost at capacity, so please tell friends and relatives to get vaccinated!” It’s not like even a nurse or doctor could directly visit every bed personally in a hospital of that size, and some of the employees I know don’t work on the health size. But when they say “I work at Mayo and I can say our beds are overflowing!” it gives the statement an air of added authority.

  39. Joy

    Philemon,
    Answer the questions, stop dodging and obfuscating the points.
    You come across very much like Johnno. He also had problems admitting to ridiculous notions regarding respiratory care. So I take it that you are just too churlish to admit you’re wrong on quite a few points, at this stage. You are also a waste of time.
    I take it that Brad was being rather more reasonable than you suggest, maybe not.

    I’m guessing that he is referring to my knowledge of the CDC and the litigious nature of the American health system? It makes no difference to what’s actually true. So it doesn’t concern me that some, like you, find it so necessary to attack the person instead of [lay9ing the ball. You’re clueless and out of ideas, clearly.

  40. Joy

    Brad T,

    @Sandy is trying to point at the problem as directly as she can. There is no conspiracy. There is only procedure and measurements. But then we have measurements in place. If the measurement is quiet, it might be trusted. If the measurement is tied to revenue or action, we have to be careful.

    None of this is novel to covid 19. It is apparent to those attempting or charged with, healthcare management on a grand scale. The mistake is thinking that only certain people can see the point you make, as if it is somehow only a fringe group who have the enlightened understanding of public health and pitfalls of managing complex systems.
    The problem with discussions like this is there is too much neurosis on part of those very easily triggered by all manner of “public” anything. In other words, as I said months ago, there are some here who are of the view that NO intervention or public money should go into any healthcare. Others ‘feel’ and think differently about the freedoms and level of intervention they will accept.
    (I speak of others as in not including me in that instance, so it is not sarcasm, it’s just a fact given the commentary. )
    Since individuals here are all of widely varying viewpoint on politics and philosophy, let alone conspiracy, answering becomes an exercise in mind reading and cat herding.
    My take from reading Sandy’s post is that she does believe in conspiracy. I doubt she would be writing posts containing outdated information about testing, for example, if there were not a good degree of bias on her part. Taking account of the emotional response, I also assume, perhaps wrongly, that she’s like many of the others on the very extreme, group of activists.
    Never mind, it seems as long as you’re questioning everything and giving lip service to the skeptics or the activists, you’re fine. That’s not really an objective atmosphere or a dispassionate one in which to make progress. It simply looks like progress in discussions is not desired because solutions imply no need for the underlying high level of emotion.

    Furthermore if some very simple truths are ignored, as happens on a regular basis, then the discussion becomes little more than an exercise in ‘appearance’ of truth, rather than actually truth.
    I’m predicting you won’t get what I”m talking about but some who don’t comment, will.
    In normal face to face conversations people ask for clarification.
    Your comment was not unclear.
    The issues of political bias in medicine are not just an American or UK problem. In one of my roles it was my job to take on the difficult patients who were often angry or seriously miffed before one even opens one’s mouth. So I’m used to many of the claims and complaints made on here fairly regularly but one doesn’t usually have to deal with a baying room. One point at a time, one problem at a time. When that problem is solved or clarification happens, in the real world, the argument doesn’t raise itself again! On the internet there’s always another day to start all over again and pretend the truth never showed up.
    One view is not the same as the next yet everyone tends to pretend they’re all in the same camp because they vote for the same political party. It’s turning in to group think and group mentality. VERY unhealthy.

    Clinical matters are not political. Controversy in clinical matters can always be separated from financial or political matters first. THEN financial controllers, bursars,, managers, statisticians and politicians are allowed to do their worst, which they do.
    If simple matters can’t be settled due to a lack of faith, trust or general respect in any given discussion, most people would walk away.

  41. Joy

    Dennis,
    At hospitals across the country, it has been written extensively how patients are not admitted for medical care without a Covid-19 PCR test. Patients do have the choice to not get care. “
    (To most people, that is pretty much force or coercion or whatever term you want to use.)
    In what way is it helpful for a given individual to refuse a PCR test on admission to hospital?

    “Indeed. My mom had an out-patient procedure done a few weeks ago, and four days later was having trouble breathing and pain in her left arm and leg and went to an immediate care center, which then took her to ER in an ambulance. She was required to get a Covid test as part of admitting her, and they then discovered that she had pulmonary embolism (clots were listed as potential side effects of the procedure she had, though I’m convinced a large contributing factor was also the fact that she’d had the damn Pfizer jab,

    How long ago did she have the jab?

    and clotting is a huge problem with these mRNA shots. Sadly, because of the intervening procedure,
    Huge? How many people out of a million do you think have had a clot due to the Pfizer jab?

    . we’ll never know conclusively why she got the clot –

    The type of clot associated with the jab is very specific and atypical for embolisms which are caused by a variety of physical or pathological factors.

    and the doctors were not even remotely interested in connecting anything at all to the jab. She was even told, wrongly by one doctor – a blatant lie – that there are no known clotting issues with the Pfizer or Moderna jabs, only AZ & J&J).

    Some Drs are ill informed but the Dr may have been referring to they type of clot. There are no known clots of the common type that is caused by the more common mechanisms. Did they explain what kind of clot your Mom had?
    The clotting from vaccinations are vanishingly rare. The ordinary frequency of occurrence of clots is increased due to the covid virus *when counting in the millions. Other factors are the relative potential for inactivity of the population and poor medication adherence due to fall out from the pandemic of all kinds.
    I trust she’s well now and hope everything is okay with her. If you or anybody you know ever has unexplained chest pain or shortness of breath, it is imperative that you go the ER or A&E. Best to call an ambulance unless you’re close by an ER. Don’t go to your GP or anywhere else in between.

  42. swordfishtrombone

    philemon,

    Interesting presentation on malfeasance in ICU protocols for treating “Covid” patients:

    Your video features a Chiropracter (who flogs vitamins from his website), completely unqualified in virology, making absurd allegations against Dr. Fauchi, head of the NIAID since 1984, awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the US, along with the Lasker Award and the National Medal of Science. I note that it is hosted on BitShute, which IMO would be better named if the “B” was replaced with “Sh”.

  43. Dennis

    “ In what way is it helpful for a given individual to refuse a PCR test on admission to hospital?”

    In what way is it helpful or sane for society to continue to subject people presenting no Covid symptoms to incessant testing for a virus with a 99.98% survival rate on the assumption that everyone is presumptively infected and infectious until proven otherwise, and all normal societal functioning including hospital and other medical operations, subjected to obsessive paranoiac concern with this one virus to the exclusion of other viruses and illnesses with vastly greater death rates?

  44. philemon

    Charles: “Why did the comments turn into a discussion of Ivermectin? I fear many readers missed the author’s urgent point.”

    It wasn’t me! Well, maybe, a little: https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2021/09/18/india-vs-israel-time-to-admit-ivermectin-works/

    But I didn’t miss the author’s urgent point. Alternative treatments are an urgent point as well. Especially, effective, inexpensive ones.

    “Most certainly, the medical management of ‘Covid-19’ is political and has become a matter of ‘hospital policy’ (i.e. politics and profit) over good science and medicine. (Hence, rigid treatment protocols that refuse and ignore alternative treatments, like Ivermectin.) And, most definitely, the Covid-19 PCR tests are bunk – as she noted they are still under EUA. [And what was with the 40-45 cT’s? False positives out the wazoo.]

    ‘But Sandy was NOT saying that a coronavirus should be treated with antibiotics, as some appear to have mistakenly taken her point, and even attacked her mentality.

    ‘Of course, the symptoms of Covid-19 are virtually indistinguishable from influenza and the SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests are mostly false positives and are no measure of infection. But old-fashioned culture and sensitivity laboratory tests DO diagnose dangerous secondary infections, like bacteria and other pathogens. However, doctors are failing to do these once-routine diagnostic tests and procedures in fear of ‘spreading covid.’

    “So, treatable conditions and dangerous bacterial infections are being missed ? by the time patients are intubated and in ICU, almost 1 in 4 have treatable bacterial superinfections. It’s terrifying, that after just 2 days in ICU, the percentage of bacterial superinfections had more than doubled!”

    “Compound that with the feigned rush to increase staffing ‘numbers’ with cheaper labor and lowering the quality of medical personnel; eliminating hands-on-medical care in favor of more profitable telehealth; ridiculous PPE theater with nurses wearing homemade decorated cotton masks; and the abandonment of basic infection control practices … iatrogenic infections have skyrocketed.

    “John T. Dzialo got it. This should be front page news. Hospitals are killing people in this ridiculous covid hysteria.

    “Medical professionals are letting politicians and bureaucrats dictate the practice of medicine. And it’s only getting worse by the day, as the best, most conscientious professionals are quitting rather than be part of what is happening.”

    brad tittle:

    “For the last 15 years, I have muttered that we are going to need lawyers in place to help us navigate the ‘universal healthcare’ system being put in place. You need to visit the lawyer with your symptoms and get advice on how to present the symptoms to the doctor in the right way so that you will not be denied service or to get the service you need.”

    Yep. Coding. Doctors were told how to code medical conditions to get the most moola for their Medical Practice.

  45. philemon

    Joy: “Answer the questions, stop dodging and obfuscating the points.
    “You come across very much like Johnno.”

    I’m honored to be “very much like Johnno.” Sorry, Joy, you are just going to have to read up on genetics yourself.

  46. philemon

    “’In what way is it helpful for a given individual to refuse a PCR test on admission to hospital?’”

    “In what way is it helpful or sane for society to continue to subject people presenting no Covid symptoms to incessant testing for a virus with a 99.98% survival rate on the assumption that everyone is presumptively infected and infectious until proven otherwise, and all normal societal functioning including hospital and other medical operations, subjected to obsessive paranoiac concern with this one virus to the exclusion of other viruses and illnesses with vastly greater death rates?”

    Amen, brother.

  47. brad.tittle

    We have all been told that Antibiotics and Viruses are not supposed to be blended.

    Except pneumonia is something that gets treated with antibiotics and the flu is a virus and some numnut somewhere decided the pneumonia and flu should reported together. People with the flu sometimes end up with pneumonia.

    Which then causes some doctors to run down slightly different paths and suggesting wild ass combinations of drugs like Hydrochloroquine, Zinc and Antibiotics, which isn’t terribly different from Ivermectin and Zinc. The addition of antibiotics in that first iteration seemed odd. But then the pneumonia flu connection wanders in and reminds one of …

    @Joy. We may be dancing down adjacent pathways. I actually sound like you half the time. But then I look at the stories coming out about overrun hospitals in Idaho only to find that St Lukes in Boise has 300 empty beds out of 700 and half of their ICU. The 15 bed hospital in Baker City is running near capacity and they cannot send anyone to their parent hospital on the covid side of the things. But even Baker City isn’t quite over run yet. Busy maybe…

    1/2 my family is vaccinated. 1/2 isn’t. Perhaps I am crazy. But I have this part of brain that goes into “I will not comply” mode when too many bullshit flags get triggered. Pretty ladies on Facebook that have no friends in common with me hitting me up? too many flags. President getting on stage and calling this a Pandemic of the Unvaccinated? Well, we were already a step too far at that point. That just caused me to go from being at the back of the line to just not being in any line.

    Too many flags are in play right now.

    Too many people are dying in the “Symptoms, signs, and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified. ” category. If that column gets any larger and it still doesn’t make the news, my hackles are just going to get bigger.

    But we are all yapping into a text box on a screen 500 miles or more from each other.

  48. Joy

    Dennis,
    To answer a question with a question, also known as a non sequitur.

    In what way is it helpful or sane for society to continue to subject people presenting no Covid symptoms to incessant testing for a virus with a 99.98% survival rate on the assumption that everyone is presumptively infected and infectious until proven otherwise, and all normal societal functioning including hospital and other medical operations, subjected to obsessive paranoiac concern with this one virus to the exclusion of other viruses and illnesses with vastly greater death rates?

    ?
    The multilayer question contains loaded assumptions and assertions.
    It’s more catharsis for some, but you’re going nowhere slowly.
    Why is it helpful to refuse a Covid test?
    Your Mum’s life was saved. Thank God for that?

  49. Joy

    Sandy,
    You missed the point, in saying:
    Covid patients don’t get bronchoscopies to make sure they were on the right antibiotics, for fear of aerosolizing and spreading Covid … “no one gets a bronch when you have “covid” — that is murder.”

    Bronchoscopies are not necessary for identifying antibiotic sensitivity.
    They can be prescribed nevertheless. To claim they are essential for that purpose is just factually wrong.
    That they are used for that purpose is quite another matter.

    That bronchoscopies were put off along with may other routine procedures is I perhaps more in line with what happened.
    How on earth do you think they prescribed medication or diagnosed lung conditions before bronchoscopies?
    They are a useful tool but their critical use is in identifying abnormal cells, for biopsy and subsequent diagnosis in rare or atypical cases or in therapeutic management of upper airway problems.

    Re antibiotics? There’s a clear protocol for prescription of antibiotics. That sputum samples are collected during bronchoscopy, routinely, is neither here nor there. Catastrophising rescheduling of routine procedures is just alarmism for no good reason.

    That there are medical staff simply not up to the challenge of working in a crisis isn’t surprising to anyone who’s worked in healthcare, presumably anywhere in the western world.

    In England, the Royal Marsden in London continued treatment during the last eighteen months. Patients requiring procedures which carry risk are simply separated for urgent procedures from patients who have tested negative for the infection. Nobody is refused treatment!

    There’s a good deal of conflation of cases of bad management or even negligence, with notions of what is /was routine crisis management. Those individuals who have been negligent will ,no doubt, be dealt with in the usual way.

  50. Joy

    “We have all been told that Antibiotics and Viruses are not supposed to be blended.”
    No, Some anti inflammatories such a s steroids are not a good idea with bacterial infections (which respond to antibiotics. )
    Most visual infections of all kinds or inflammatory disease DO respond to steroids.

    Pneumonia is not one thing, which is where the confusion is coming in.
    There are different types of pneumonia, this is identified by cause.
    Visual pneumonia is different from the type which is associated with copious secretions and which requires antibiotics IV and usually admission to hospital. It is now managed, in England, at home, where appropriate, to reduce the numbers in hospital with infection. District nurses come out to change IV’s etc. That is probably the same in the US.

    However if you have a virus of any kind you can also have another infection at the same time. Blood tests can help in confirming infection type, along with other simple non high tech assessment techniques. So my argument is, and has always been, that there are staff at all levels simply not equipped to make decisions. Many are not allowed in their normal working life; so when all hell breaks out, a care setting is only as good as its weakest link. Much of the horror spoken of, (if even true and not exaggerated) is due to incompetence, not deliberate conspiracy and orders from on high.
    I never took nor would I take an order which was unsafe. Every person is responsible for their actions and must be prepared to stand up for what they did or did not do in a court if necessary. More autonomy, not less, is needed. More trust, better training from the very beginning is needed. The same situation is true of large corporations. It’s just that lives aren’t put at direct risk in office settings. So freedom in the workplace, of a kind, is what has been missing due in no small part to the employment lawyers interfering. Too much blaming and litigation, not enough broad shoulders of professionalism ,.


    1/2 my family is vaccinated. 1/2 isn’t. Perhaps I am crazy. But I have this part of brain that goes into “I will not comply” mode when too many bullshit flags get triggered.
    You and me both. I don’t blame you for the attitude or the incredulity at this point in the debacle.
    Pretty ladies on Facebook that have no friends in common with me hitting me up?
    Too many flags are in play right now.
    Absolutely, too many items of information for the uninitiated to be able (easily) to shift through for veracity.

    So like someone above implied, may have been you or Dennis, people are going to need to be experts themselves in order to be able to navigate through a healthcare system. Ignorance is bliss! This is one of the reasons why it’s often said of people in medical fields that they make bad patents.
    ~~
    It’s frustrating to watch people make bad decisions about their health but that is in the nature of working in healthcare. This situation is just magnifying many of the usual problems. One has to learn to let go of control of other people. Like being a good parent I suppose. Once people are given the information, soberly and without prejudice, their choice should be respected.
    I don’t agree with coercion of the public. However I do believe in allowing the truth to be told, shown, demonstrated, without politics becoming involved.
    I think it’s gone on long enough for people to have received good information in this country. Don’t think it’s been the same over there. THAT is the system failing. Ours has failed in other ways

  51. Sandy

    For medical professionals
    • who refused to critically examine those new CAP protocols that were put in place during “Covid,”
    • who ignored the University of Pittsburgh study from Aug 25, 2021 and others who were sounding the alarm about bacterial infections among PCR “Covid-19 positive” patients that were not being treated, and
    • who ignored the NHCN study of hospital acquired bacterial infections that mostly went untreated under “Covid” protocols
    Maybe someone will care that even years later the concern raised in this article continue to be proven out in actual patient data.

    And deaths.

    Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine just published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation that the key driver of death in patients with “Covid-19” was secondary bacterial pneumonia that failed to be treated. The deaths from untreated bacterial infections appear to have exceeded deaths from the viral infection itself. They also found no support for that “cytokine storm” myth cause of death.

    How many needless deaths are we talking about? They found nearly half of patients WITH Covid-19 had a ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia and would likely have lived had they been treated.

    Countless people died during “Covid” when doctors failed to practice medicine, including my husband.

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