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I’ve run across a number of people who slowly increased their alcohol consumption over months or years, not realizing it was causing or would cause problems for them. Alcohol is dangerous, lethal at times.
From a health standpoint, the generally accepted safe levels of consumption are:
One drink is 5 ounces of wine, 12 ounces of beer, or 1.5 ounces of 80 proof distilled spirits (e.g., vodka, whiskey, gin).
Dry January was conceived in the UK in 2012 or 2014. The idea is simply to abstain from all alcohol for the month of January. The Alcohol Change UK website can help you git ‘er done. Many folks notice that they sleep better, have more energy, lose weight, and save money. There are other potential benefits.
If you think you may have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, check your CAGE score. It’s quick and easy.
Alternatively, if you make a commitment to a Dry January but can’t do it, you may well have a problem.
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In the hospital where I work, most COVID-19 patients get vitamin D (cholecalciferol) 1,000-2,000 IU daily, hoping it will help fight the virus infection. Vitamin D is cheap and we haven’t seen any adverse effects from it.
It seems pretty clear that folks with deficiency of vitamin D who then develop COVID-19, have worse than usual outcomes. The only way to know if you have a deficiency is to get a blood level test. I recommend to my loved ones that they take supplemental cholecalciferol during surges of COVID-19 unless they’re certain they’re getting enough sunlight to generate vitamin D, or have a normal blood level. (I’m not recommending that to you; I’m not your doctor.) The dose is 1,000 or 2,000 IU daily, depending on body weight and other factors. I have seen a few people, usually little old ladies, develop hypercalcemia (high blood calcium) if they take that much vitamin D plus a calcium supplement, and that can be a problem.
Here’s the abstract of a recent literature review article in Nutrition:
“Molecular studies have demonstrated the importance of the exacerbated immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection, called the cytokine storm, in more severe COVID-19. The pathophysiology is complex and involves several homeostatic factors; among them, a deficit of vitamin D draws attention because of its high frequency in the population. Some evidence suggests that people with low serum vitamin D levels have worse outcomes, often requiring intensive care. This review analyzed the studies available in the global literature addressing the benefits of vitamin D in COVID-19, relating serum levels to the severity of the disease, and indicating vitamin D as a possible prophylactic and therapy in infection.”
Read the article’s introduction for a list of vitamin D’s role in fighting infection.
The authors conclude:
“To our knowledge, there is still no robust evidence of the prophylactic and therapeutic role of vitamin D in COVID-19, and more clinical trials are needed to prove its efficacy against infection. Considering that its pharmacologic safety profile is well known, it is prudent to keep its mean serum concentration > 30 ng/mL in people with COVID-19 and the susceptible population.”
Another recent study in Nutrition compared the prevalence of COVID-19 with the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in 20 European countries. They found no association one way or the other:
“Our analysis concludes that available data on the prevalence of Vit D deficiency among the European population do not allow for concluding that it constitutes a strong risk factor in the COVID-19 epidemic. However, these findings are not in line with outcomes of similar research works published recently.”
In some of the countries in the study, over 50% of the adult population was deficient in vitamin D.
Bottom line for me: Vitamin D supplementation doesn’t seem to hold as much promise in suppressing COVID-19 as I thought it would.
Steve Parker, M.D.
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Fraudci:
“This would not be the first time, if it happened, that a vaccine that looked good in initial safety actually made people worse.”
From CNN:
Cornell University reported 903 cases of Covid-19 among students between December 7-13, and a “very high percentage” of them are Omicron variant cases in fully vaccinated individuals, according to university officials.
The school’s Covid-19 dashboard was updated late Tuesday afternoon, accounting for the jump in case numbers reported.”Virtually every case of the Omicron variant to date has been found in fully vaccinated students, a portion of whom had also received a booster shot,” said Vice President for University Relations Joel Malina in a statement.
As of result, the school has decided to shut down its Ithaca, New York, campus, where it has about 25,600 students.
“While I want to provide reassurance that, to date, we have not seen severe illness in any of our infected students, we do have a role to play in reducing the spread of the disease in the broader community,” Pollack said.
Ninety-seven percent of people on campus are fully vaccinated, the university says on its website.
Those vaccines are really great, aren’t they?!
Some hospitals drop COVID-19 vaccine mandate for employees
From MSN.com:
As U.S. hospitals continue to grapple with a surge of COVID-19 patients and ongoing staffing shortages, the vaccine mandate debate is heating up once again.
Now, some of the largest U.S. hospital systems have dropped their vaccine mandate for employees.
Tenet Healthcare and Cleveland Clinic are among the companies dropping the mandates, according to information reported by The Wall Street Journal.Caption: Some of the largest U.S. hospital systems have dropped their vaccine mandate for employees, reports Lexi Nahl. (WPEC)
This comes as several hospitals deal with ongoing labor shortages due to burnout and increasing labor costs.
Cleveland Clinic and AdventHealth have also abandoned their vax mandates.
I hear that healthcare systems with a staffing crisis bring in “traveling nurses” to help fill the gap at a salary three times greater than the “healthcare heroes” that that have been there since the beginning. How would that make you feel if you were that loyal nurse who has been there for the long haul, but no change in salary and forced to take the vax?
Some hospitals will pay a “finder’s fee” of $2,000 or more if you refer a frontline healthcare worker that they hire.
The more we vaccinate, the higher the number of cases
From Steve Kirsch:
This comes as no surprise to those of us who have been paying attention.
Next time you talk to your county health official, ask them why. The officials will then explain that they just follow orders. They don’t make public policy.
They are simply never going to figure this stuff out that their interventions are making things worse. It’s too embarrassing to admit. So they don’t talk about it and hope you don’t notice.
Supermarket giant strips unvaccinated workers of their benefits
From WND.com:
Supermarket chain Kroger announced Tuesday it will eliminate paid emergency leave for unvaccinated employees who contract COVID-19 in addition to requiring some of them to pay a monthly $50 health insurance surcharge starting in 2022, according to a company memo.
The country’s largest supermarket chain, which employs roughly 465,000 workers….
From World Tribune:
In a stunning admission, virologist Dr. Andrew Hill acknowledged in a zoom call that publication of his study could lead to the deaths of at least a half million people.
In defending his reversal on the effectiveness of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19, he discussed his “difficult situation” and said, “I’ve got this role where I’m supposed to produce this paper and we’re in a very difficult, delicate balance.”
Andrew Hill, PhD, is a senior visiting Research Fellow in Pharmacology at Liverpool University. He is also an advisor for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Clinton Foundation. As a researcher for the WHO evaluating ivermectin, Hill wielded enormous influence over international guidance for the drug’s use.
Hill had previously authored a analysis of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 that found the drug overwhelmingly effective.
On Jan. 6 of 2021, Hill testified enthusiastically before the NIH COVID-19 Treatment Guidlelines (sic) Panel in support of ivermectin’s use. Within a month, however, Hill found himself in what he describes as a “tricky situation.” Under pressure from his funding sponsors, Hill then published an unfavorable study. Ironically, he used the same sources as in the original study. Only the conclusions had changed.
Steve Parker, M.D.
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Recently, I received news that top researchers at multiple highly respected institutions (including Harvard) who had earlier been publicly promoting the vaccine have now changed their minds and are privately refusing to get the booster.
How is that possible? Did we finally convince them with the data? Most of my truthteller friends have been censored and/or deplatformed. So what is causing these people to shift their views so quickly?
The credit for the attitude shift goes our best convincer: the vaccine itself.
These researchers are seeing first hand how dangerous the vaccine is because they are involved in studies in hospitalized and/or outpatients and they see the numbers first hand.
Unfortunately, I’m not hearing that where I live, yet. But I don’t talk to a lot of folks.
I heard about this from Dr Robert Malone:
Cleveland Clinic researchers have developed the world’s first risk prediction model for healthcare providers to forecast an individual patient’s likelihood of testing positive for COVID-19 as well as their outcomes from the disease.
According to a new study published in CHEST, the risk prediction model shows the relevance of age, race, gender, socioeconomic status, vaccination history and current medications in COVID-19 risk. The risk calculator is a new tool to aid healthcare providers in predicting patient risk and tailoring decision-making about care. It is intended to help providers prioritize COVID-19 testing but is not designed for use by asymptomatic individuals who are merely curious about their risk.
https://consultqd.clevelandclinic.org/first-of-kind-covid-19-risk-calculator-helps-predict-likelihood-of-testing-positive-and-potential-disease-outcomes/
I was interested to read that: “Patients actively taking the nonprescription sleep aid melatonin, the beta-blocker carvedilol or the antidepressant paroxetine are less likely to test positive than patients not taking these drugs.”
Click for the COVID-19 risk calculator.
Veteran actor fired for refusing Covid-19 vaccine sues ABC
A veteran actor is suing ABC for religious discrimination after he was fired from America’s longest-running soap opera for refusing to get vaccinated against Covid-19.
Ingo Rademacher, 50, who starred as Jasper Jacks on General Hospital for 25 years before his dismissal last month, has accused the Disney-owned American Broadcasting Company (ABC) of refusing to accept his exemption request for “sincerely held religious objections to the Covid-19 shots.”
Rademacher is represented by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – the son of assassinated US Senator Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former US president John F. Kennedy – along with attorneys John W. Howard and Scott J. Street. The actor’s lawsuit claims ABC “subjected him to half an hour of cross-examination about his religious beliefs and then denied his exemption request, without explanation.”
The lawsuit blasts the network’s decision as “blatantly unlawful” and argued that ABC does not “have the authority to force a medical treatment on its employees against their will,” and would have to offer religious exemption even if it did.
There Comes a Time When There Is No Alternative to Fighting for Your Life and Liberty
From Paul Craig Roberts:
“Fauci’s one man control through NIH, the Gates Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust gives him control over 57 percent of worldwide medical research, thus solidifying his personal control over the Covid narrative. Fauci and his acolytes at NIH receive six figure annual royalty payments on products they helped develop and ushered through the FDA approval process, including the Covid vaccine, and this is on top of Fauci’s taxpayer-funded salary, the highest in the US federal government. The CDC itself, allegedly a taxpayer-funded regulatory agency, owns and profits from 57 vaccine patents and spends 41% of its annual $12 billion budget buying and distributing vaccines. NIH owns hundreds of vaccine patents and profits from the sale of products it regulates. Try to comprehend the conflict of interest in this fact: The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) receives 45% of its budget from Big Pharma.”
“Little wonder that Fauci engineered the creation of Covid with research grants, and the virus somehow was released in the interest of Big Pharma vaccine profits. The conservatives protect Fauci by blaming China, the country where Fauci shifted the research funding from the University of North Carolina.”
Steve Parker, M.D.
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Top ICU Doctor Suspended After Suing Hospital for Banning Life-Saving COVID Treatments
From Children’s Health Defense:
A top critical care physician who filed a lawsuit against Sentara Norfolk General Hospital over its ban on administering life-saving drugs to treat COVID patients, has had his hospital privileges suspended.
Dr. Paul Marik, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School and director of the ICU at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, learned about the 14-day suspensionwhen he arrived to work on Saturday and found a letter on his desk.
The letter was dated Nov. 18 — the same day Marik appeared before a judge in Norfolk Circuit Court requesting a temporary injunction to lift the ban, Marik’s attorney said.
What on earth could be motivating Dr Marek? Enormous legal bills? Infamy? Secret desire to lose his medical license? Wicked pleasure seeing patients die? Or is he simply incompetent, as the hospital implies?
Click for info on Children’s Health Defense’s priorities.
Pfizer booster in Israel reduced risk of death from COVID-19 by 90% over the course of two months.
Study subjects were 50 years of age or older. Half of them had hypertension, a third had obesity, and a third had diabetes.
The study authors note that…
Another major limitation of this study is the lack of data regarding serious adverse events. Future studies will be needed to assess the safety of the administration of the booster.
…studies with longer-term follow-up periods to assess the effectiveness and safety of the booster are still warranted.
Alarm grows as mortuaries fill with thousands of non-COVID deaths
Mike Whitney writing at unz.com had access to the U.K. Telegraph article and shared this:
“Nearly 10,000 more people than usual have died in the past four months from non-Covid reasons, as experts called for an urgent government inquiry into whether the deaths were preventable….
Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that England and Wales registered 20,823 more deaths than the five-year average in the past 18 weeks. Only 11,531 deaths involved Covid.”
We have a recent similar report pertaining to Scotland.
Could these excess non-COVID deaths be caused by the COVID-19 vaccines via clots in hearts, brains, and lungs? Or are the social lock-downs the cause via suicides, despair, and postoned medical care?
Alleged Dr Rochagne Kilian was practicing Emergency Medicine at Gray Bruce Health Services in Ontario, Canada, in early 2021 as the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out. Her department noticed increased frequency of strokes, transient ischemic attacks, and stroke-like symptoms. These issues are often caused by blood clots. A common blood test that screens for blood clots is called d-dimer. Dr Kilian noticed that many patients with stroke-like symptoms had received a COVID-19 vaccine and also had high d-dimer levels. So she naturally wondered whether the vaccines were causing strokes. I’m not sure why and how it transpired, but she eventually resigned her position in protest of vaccine mandates and corruption of health services. Her license to practice medicine was suspended on Oct 27, 2021. She’s a bad sheep, eh?
Steve Parker, M.D.
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It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
– Samuel Clemens
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Jack Thomas is an 82-year-old newspaperman who unexpectedly learned he would die soon. He wrote about it at The Boston Globe. RTWT. If you’re old, you may need a tissue handy, in case you get something in your eye. He’s a talented writer. A few out-of-order excerpts:
“After a week of injections, blood tests, X-rays, and a CAT scan, I have been diagnosed with cancer. It’s inoperable. Doctors say it will kill me within a time they measure not in years, but months.
“As the saying goes, fate has dealt me one from the bottom of the deck, and I am now condemned to confront the question that has plagued me for years: How does a person spend what he knows are his final months of life?
“Atop the list of things I’ll miss are the smiles and hugs every morning from my beautiful wife, Geraldine, the greatest blessing of my life. I hate the notion of an eternity without hearing laughter from my three children. And what about my 40 rose bushes? Who will nurture them? I cannot imagine an afterlife without the red of my America roses or the aroma of my yellow Julia Childs.
“We told each of the three children individually. John Patrick put his face in his hands, racked with sobs. After hanging up the telephone, Jennifer doubled over and wept until her dog, Rosie, approached to lick away the tears but not the melancholy. Faith explained over the telephone that, if I could see her, she was weeping and wondering how she could get along without her dad. Now, she is on the Internet every day, snorkeling for new research, new strategies, new medications. My wife cries every morning, then rolls up her sleeves and handles all doctor appointments and medication. Without her . . . I cannot imagine.
“Editing the final details of one’s life is like editing a story for the final time. It’s the last shot an editor has at making corrections, the last rewrite before the roll of the presses. It’s more painful than I anticipated to throw away files and paperwork that seemed critical to my survival just two weeks ago, and today, are all trash. Like the manual for the TV that broke down four years ago, and notebooks for stories that will never be written, and from former girlfriends, letters whose value will plummet the day I die. Filling wastebasket after wastebasket is a regrettable reminder that I have squandered much of my life on trivia.
“Unlike Roman Catholics, Jews, and atheists, we Episcopalians are very good at fence-sitting. We embrace all viewpoints, and as a result, we are as confused as the Unitarians.
“Does the intensity of a fatal illness clarify anything? Every day, I look at my wife’s beautiful face more admiringly, and in the garden, I do stare at the long row of blue hydrangeas with more appreciation than before. And the hundreds and hundreds of roses that bloomed this year were a greater joy than usual, not merely in their massive sprays of color, but also in their deep green foliage, the soft petals, the deep colors and the aromas that remind me of boyhood. As for the crises in Cuba and Haiti, however, and voting rights and the inexplicable stubbornness of Republicans who refuse to submit to an inoculation that might save their lives — on all those matters, no insights, no thunderbolts of discovery. I remain as ignorant as ever.
“I’ll miss my homes in Cambridge and Falmouth. I’ll never again see the sun rise over the marsh off Vineyard Sound, never again see that little, yellow goldfinch that perched atop a hemlock outside my window from time to time so that both of us could watch the tide rise to cover the wetland.
“As death draws near, I feel the same uncomfortable transition I experienced when I was a teenager at Brantwood Camp in Peterborough, New Hampshire, packing up to go home after a grand summer. I’m not sure what awaits me when I get home, but this has certainly been an exciting experience. I had a loving family. I had a great job at the newspaper. I met fascinating people, and I saw myriad worldwide wonders. It’s been full of fun and laughter, too, a really good time.
“I just wish I could stay a little longer.”
Parker here. Are you good with God? Have you examined the life of Jesus and accepted him as your Lord and Savior? Consider and decide before it’s too late.
Steve Parker, M.D.
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Advanced Mediterranean Diet 