Category Archives: Coronavirus

COVID-19: FDA Gets Bitch-Slapped By Appeals Court for Statements on Ivermectin

artist rendition of coronavirus
Artist conception of the dreaded virus

From The Tennessee Star:

Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, Dr. Paul E. Marik and Dr. Robert L. Apter sued the FDA in June of 2022, asking the court to: “Hold unlawful and set aside any FDA actions directing or opining on whether ivermectin should be used for certain off-label purposes, including treatment of COVID-19.”

“After nearly two years and a resounding rebuke by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the FDA has agreed to remove its misleading social media posts and consumer directives regarding ivermectin and Covid-19,” said Bowden.

The Appeals Court had written in its decision: “The FDA is not a physician. It has authority to inform, announce, and apprise—but not to endorse, denounce, or advise.”


That last line is beautifully written.

Steve Parker, M.D.

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Former Australian Medical Association President Says COVID Vaccines Are Much More Dangerous Than Thought

The various available vaccines, possibly even different batches from same manufacturer, have different adverse effect profiles

From News.com.au:

Former federal MP [Member of Parliament?] Dr Kerryn Phelps has revealed she and her wife both suffered serious and ongoing injures from Covid vaccines, while suggesting the true rate of adverse events is far higher than acknowledged due to underreporting and “threats” from medical regulators.

In an explosive submission to Parliament’s Long Covid inquiry, the former Australian Medical Association (AMA) president has broken her silence about the “devastating” experience — emerging as the most prominent public health figure in the country to speak up about the taboo subject.

“This is an issue that I have witnessed first-hand with my wife who suffered a severe neurological reaction to her first Pfizer vaccine within minutes, including burning face and gums, paraesethesiae, and numb hands and feet, while under observation by myself, another doctor and a registered nurse at the time of immunisation,” the 65-year-old said.


Steve Parker, M.D.

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COVID19: Although Biden Says the Pandemic Is Over, You May Still Want to Know About Nasal Irrigation, Which Reduced Deaths and Hospitalization

Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com

From ScienceDaily:

Starting twice daily flushing of the mucus-lined nasal cavity with a mild saline solution soon after testing positive for COVID-19 can significantly reduce hospitalization and death, investigators report.

They say the technique that can be used at home by mixing a half teaspoon each of salt and baking soda in a cup of boiled or distilled water then putting it into a sinus rinse bottle is a safe, effective and inexpensive way to reduce the risk of severe illness and death from coronavirus infection that could have a vital public health impact.

Click for the scientific journal article.

The irrigation, aka lavage, was not done by simply filling a spray bottle with the saline solution and squirting it up your nose. Participants used one of two high pressure devices: NAVAGE or Neilmed Sinus Rinse. The manufacturer’s of those devices provided at least partial funding for the study.



Steve Parker, M.D.

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Worried About Vax-Related Side Effects? Breath Easier One Year Out

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I’m at my one year anniversary of getting Pfizer’s COVID-19 vax. I’m starting to worry less about adverse effects, not that I ever lost much sleep over it. Fortunately, I’m hearing no chatter at my hospital about requiring the boosters. Yet I don’t hear any of the vax mandators saying “we were wrong.” A relative of mine is searching for a job now and reports that the great majority of posted jobs still require the vax. Unbelievable!

The patient is wise to look away. If you watch the needle go in, it’ll hurt more.

From Steve Kirsch:

Many people assumed the vaccine kills you quickly (in the first two weeks) because that’s when people notice the association and report it to VAERS [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System in the U.S.]. This is still true; it does kill some people quickly: half of the deaths reported in VAERS are in the first few weeks.

But the key words are “reported in VAERS.” It turns out that if we don’t have that restriction but are just wondering when most of the deaths after COVID vaccination happen, the answer is different.

Thanks to a helper [whistleblower] who works at HHS [Health and Human Services in the U.S.], we can now clearly see that most of the deaths from the vaccine are happening an average of 5 months from the last dose. That is for the second dose; it may be getting shorter the more shots you get but there are arguments both ways (since there can be survivor bias). Using data from the UK, we can see more clearly that the delay time is around 23 weeks (so a bit more than 5 weeks). We’ll dive into that shortly.

This delay explains why the life insurance companies got off-the-charts all-cause mortality peaks for people under 60 in Q3 and Q4 [3rd and 4th quarters of 2021] rather than right after the shots rolled out. 

The five month delay is also consistent with death reports where people are developing new aggressive cancers that are killing them over a 4 to 6 month period. 

The 5 month death delay was also confirmed using only European data. That analysis was posted Aug 11, but I learned about it after I wrote this post.

So when you hear of a death from stroke, cardiac arrest, heart attack, cancer, and suicide that is happening around 5 months after vaccination, it could very well be a vaccine-related death.

Kirsch concludes that:

The UK data shows statistical proof of causality of deaths (p<.001): the vaccine doses track with the excess deaths 23 weeks later. Dose dependency is key to showing causality. If no one can explain this, the precautionary principle of medicine requires any ethical society to halt the vaccines now.

This graph, which is not publicly available, is from the US Social Security death master file. It compares deaths from 2021 to deaths in 2020. You simply cannot get such a rise in deaths like that unless something very deadly is affecting massive numbers of people. This explains why insurance companies all over the world were seeing massive death spikes in Q3 and Q4 of 2021. The vaccine was simply taking an average of 5 months from the most recent injection to kill people. The peak here is September 9, 2021.

In what is possibly related news, guess what’s the top killer in Alberta, Canada, at this time. “Ill-defined and unknown causes.” I’d expect that out of an undeveloped, third-world country, but not Canada. Are they trying to hide something?

For your consideration, Safe and Effective: A Second Opinion (I haven’t viewed it):

Steve Parker, M.D.

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Chronic Use of Proton Pump Inhibitors Is Dangerous

I have nothing against Prilosec in particular. It can be very helpful. It’s one of several PPIs on the market.

Proton Pump Inhibitor drugs (PPIs) greatly reduce the production of acid in the stomach. They revolutionized and improved the treatment of ulcers in the stomach and duodenum. When I started medical practice in 1981, I saw many patients who had required stomach surgery to treat their ulcers. Remember the good ol’ Billroth procedures? Of course you don’t. The first PPI approved for use in the US. was cimetidine (Tagamet) in 1979.

But wait, you say. “Isn’t there a reason we have stomach acid in the first place?” Good question! Because if we reduce stomach acid, it may cause problems. Regardless of what acid contributes to food digestion, it also kills germs in food and water. Germs that may kill us if ignored. Most of us in the developed world would be horrified to drink untreated water out of a lake, stream, river, or spring. But what do you think Homo sapiens did for most our 200,000 years of our existence?

From Joe Alcock, M.D.:

Omeprazole was made over the counter in 2003 but I don’t think these drugs should ever have been made available without prescription. PPIs are powerful drugs that treat heartburn by reducing gastric acid production. This is accomplished by PPI binding to the hydrogen/potassium ATPase enzyme on gastric parietal cells lining the stomach. PPIs do more than block acid. They are associated with an increased risk of congestive heart failure, kidney disease, long bone fractures, and dementia, vitamin B12 deficiency, reviewed here. Regular use of proton pump inhibitors is associated with increased incidence of type two diabetes, about 24% higher compared to non-users of the drug. Proton pump inhibitors are also linked an with increased risk of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (which is a clue as to why these drugs can be harmful). They also increase the risk of infection by Clostridiales difficile by about 2x.

Most of these individual observational studies are unable to establish causation, but the preponderance of evidence points to PPIs causing harm.

Dr Alcock also found evidence that PPI users who catch COVID-19 have 1.6x increased risk for severe disease and death.

If you’re prescribed a PPI for chronic use, check with your physician to see if you still need it. Occasional use for heartburn shouldn’t be a problem. For chronic heartburn, consider a low-carb diet and stop nocturnal alcohol consumption.

Steve Parker, M.D.

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Do You Still Trust Your Physician?

From WebMD: “Comorbidity is a medical term that you may have heard your doctor use. It describes the existence of more than one disease or condition within your body at the same time. Comorbidities are usually long-term, or chronic. They may or may not interact with each other.”

“JC Dodge” posted a thought-provoking article at American Partisan. For example:

Although we are all dealing with COmorVIDities, anyone who has COmorVIDities from the vaccine can place them purely at the feet of the medical community. You might say, “But JC, the government and companies required it of Employees.”. Although this appears true on it’s face, if the medical community had stood up and acted on the, “First do no harm.” oath they took as medical providers, the government and businesses wouldn’t have had anywhere to go but “STOP”.

One of the COmorVIDities I now have, is a fear that anything I am told by any medical provider, whether for my kids or myself, is BS and aimed at padding their pocket. The majority of them have proven they will take kickbacks from the GOV or Big Pharma, over providing quality medical care.

I actually questioned my Child’s Pediatrician, when she was getting a normal childhood vaccine, because it didn’t sound like the ones my other three kids had received over the last 24 years. Why? Because I no longer trust them to do the right thing for their Patients.

Although I know some good Doctors and Nurses, I believe most of them were forced out of what is considered, “The Medical Community”, because they weren’t foolish enough to get the vaccine, or wanted to be able to prescribe “Non-Approved by Big Pharma” treatments. Most of those left are getting their “30 Pieces of Silver” from Big Pharma and the GOV, and couldn’t be happier.

I am a hospitalist. Most of the physicians I know are frontline in-the-trenches doctors taking care of patients and in no position of authority over hospital administrators, business administrators, and public health authorities.

I remember only two things from the first day of medical school, spoken by an Asian professor:

  • “If you’re sitting here today, you probably have an IQ of at least 120.” (So don’t worry, you can handle the workload.)
  • Mention of Sir William Osler’s Aequanimitas essay.
  • “Every day not sunny day.”

Most of medical school, which typically lasts four years, involves memorization of massive amounts of information, which you regurgitate and on a test and have mostly forgotten a month later. It is not fun, to say the least. Medical students have actually done more analytic thinking while acquiring their undergraduate degrees and in high school. After med school, physicians spend at least three to five years in a residency that also requires incredible memorization, but you tend to retain more since it is clinically relevant. Much of the actual thinking of a practicing physician revolves around establishing a diagnosis and formulating a rational treatment plan. Even then, much of the diagnosis is made by high-tech imaging and blood tests, so the doctor has to do less thinking than our predecessors of 40 years ago. Similarly, we have “clinical practice guidelines” that are composed by “authoritative” committees, telling us how to treat specific conditions. If we follow those guidelines, we may be more likely to retain our jobs, earn a salary bonus, and prevail in malpractice lawsuits. Physicians who think and question the guidelines are too often seen as trouble-makers. Unlike 40 years ago, a majority of physicians are not independent, but are employed by large organizations that tend to control them via a paycheck.

My point is: Many practicing physicians don’t have to do much thinking, so they don’t. Sad, but true.

So JC Dodqe is right to question his child’s pediatrician.

Steve Parker, M.D.

PS: One of the reasons for specialization is that there is so much to learn in any given field, there’s just no time or mental capacity to keep up with less pertinent aspects of medicine. An orthopedic surgeon doesn’t need to know much at all about heart failure, diabetes, and anemia. That’s my job.

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COVID-19 Prevention Strategies

Artist’s renditions of coronavirus

Oral preventatives during disease surges:

  • Vitamin D (cholecalciferol) 1,000-2,000 IU/day. (Gruff Davies and Linda Benskin recommend, in general, 4,000 IU daily, perhaps year-round, or whatever combination of food, supplementation, and sunlight gets your blood level of 25-hydroxy vitamin D to to 50 ng/mL.)
  • Aspirin 81-325 mg/day
  • Vitamin C 500 mg/day
  • Elemental zinc 10-50 mg/day
  • Melatonin 1.5-6 mg/day at night or bedtime

The doses vary, depending on body weight, age, tolerance to the drug. Generally, the higher doses are for younger and heavier folks. If one gets plentiful sunlight exposure, the oral vitamin D may not be needed.

Other strategies during disease surges (or always?):

  • Regular exercise
  • Lose excess weight, especially if obese (BMI over 30)
  • Maintain normal blood sugars (if diabetic, keep HgbA1c under 6.5%)
  • Avoid close, prolonged contact with coughing and sneezing people, especially in enclosed spaces
  • Frequent hand-washing if exposed to public doorknobs, elevator buttons, or other potentially contaminated surfaces, or if around sick (coughing and/or sneezing) people
  • Avoid sick people who are coughing and sneezing
  • Eat healthful food

Did you notice I haven’t mentioned masks? I’m not a big believer. Do I wear an N-95 mask when I’m seeing a COVID-19 patient at the hospital? You bet. And the mask was fit-tested. Is that testing available to the general public? Not that I’m aware.

Do I have great data to support all these strategies? No, but some. Are they recommended by the CDC or NIH (Nat’l Institutes of Health)? I don’t know or care. I’ve lost faith in them. I’m afraid they’ve been bought and paid for by Big Pharma (and others?).

I don’t know about your personal health and medical history. I’m not your doctor. If you’re considering any of these recommendations, consult your personal physician before implementation.

The patient is wise to look away. If you watch the needle go in, it’ll hurt more.

I was motivated to write this post by the failures and risks of the rushed vaccines. Vaccination might be helpful if you are sickly, over 65, or have underlying conditions such as diabetes, active cancer, a poor immune system, obesity (especially BMI over 35), or some other co-morbidities. I see both very healthy, vigorous 65-year-olds, and sickly 65-year-olds. Which one are you? If you’re over 80, you may have nothing to lose by vaccinating. Average U.S. life expectancy is 79 years, less for men, longer for women.

Steve Parker, M.D.

Update on Jan 9, 2022:

From Dr Robert Malone on Dec 31, 2021:

“So, yes back to my thoughts on Omicron – please keep taking that vitamin D3 and get your levels tested, if you haven’t already.  Use a formulation that combines the D3 with Vitamins A and K. Please keep up with the zinc, vitamin C and magnesium.  Work on weight control, glycemic control and please exercise!  All are important.”

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Parents: Don’t Let Them Vaccinate Your Healthy Children Against COVID-19

I say”them” because some government authorities around the world, e.g., Australia, will vaccinate against the wishes of parents. I worry that tyrants in California are about to do the same.

ketogenic diet, children
Healthy children have extremely low risk of death from COVID-19. Should we subject them to unknown risks of vaccines just to save elderly Boomer lives?

These are experimental vaccines without a long-term safety record. The short-term record in adults doesn’t look that great either.

Jonathan Howard at Science-Based Medicine figures that fewer than one in 100,000 healthy children who contract COVID-19 will die from it. Among the young decedents, at least three out of four have a predisposing condition such as obesity, asthma, a developmental disorder, a neurological condition, or cardiovascular disease. Additionally, Dr. Howard says three out of four deaths are in Hispanics, Blacks, or indigenous people (American Indian/Alaskan Native).

Dr. Howard admits that the risk of death from COVID-19 for children is very low. But since the risk is not zero, all children should be vaccinated.

Dr. Howard bases his recommendation for the Pfizer/BionNTech vaccine for children on very limited data. This is child abuse since we don’t have long-term vaccination safety data.

You know I’m not a pediatrician. I’m an internist and hospitalist. Dr. Howard is a neurologist and psychiatrist. There may be a legitimate role of COVID-19 vaccination for sickly children. But there’s no way in hell I’d vaccinate my healthy children without long-term safety data.

For a healthy child, the potential risks of COVID-19 vaccination outweigh the potential benefits.

Question authority. Including me.

Steve Parker, M.D.

PS: Read William M Briggs: Kids Don’t Need to Be Vaccinated.

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Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine: No Deaths Prevented Over Six Months

Alea iacta est

I ran across a pre-print placebo-controlled scientific study looking at results of Pfizer-BionTec vaccination over the course six months. The primary take-home point for me is that the vaccine did not prevent death. Mysteriously, the study authors didn’t discuss the lack of death prevention by the vaccine; I found the data in Figure 1. The vaccine did prevent severe COVID-19 disease.

The scientific name for this particular vaccine is BNT162b2.

Remember that Big Pharma and the CDC have been telling us since November 2020 that the COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective (~90% or better) in preventing severe disease and death.

The study at hand looked at 22,000 folks who got two doses of the vaccine and another 22,000 who got a saline placebo. There were 16 deaths in the vaccine group, 15 in placebo.

Thirty-one participants met the CDC’s definition of severe COVID-19; 30 of these were in the placebo group. So the odds of developing severe COVID-19 over six months if not vaccinated were 0.136%. Or one in 735. (Tell me if my math is wrong.) I fully expect the odds are higher if elderly, lower if young.

Among the vaccinated, 77 developed COVID-19. The placebo group had 850 cases. The report doesn’t state a definition of a “COVID-19 case.” I presume a positive PCR nasal swab and one or more of the usual symptoms. Maddeningly, when the mainstream media mentions a case count, the number may include folks with a positive PCR swab but no symptoms.

Most participants were enrolled between August and October 2020. The U.S. had a major spike in cases in January 2021. The data cut-off date for this study was March 31, 2021, so many of the participants had significant exposure. Median age for both groups was 51. 76% of participants were in the U.S.

The authors note that the risk of developing COVID-19 in the vaccinated tended to rise over time. Vaccine effectiveness declined about 6% every two months. A booster vaccination might be recommended at some point. Pfizer’s CEO revealed this a couple months ago.

For all I know, the linked-to pre-print article above is a hoax. These data are not going to help Pfizer sell more vaccine! If the pre-print is legit, I assume Pfizer was somehow compelled to publish the results.

This preprint reports new research that has not been certified by peer review and should not be used to guide clinical practice.

Steve Parker, M.D.

h/t The Last Refuge or theconservativetreehouse.com

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My Recent Posts About COVID-19

Artist’s rendition of coronavirus

I write about COVID-19 at one of my other super-secret blogs. If you’re interested:

Steve Parker, M.D.

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