Day: January 31, 2023

• By May 2020, it had become apparent that the standard practice of putting COVID-19 patients on mechanical ventilation with ventilators was a death sentence

• Between 50% and 86% of COVID patients placed on life support ended up dying

• By May 2020, doctors had also found that high-flow nasal cannulas and proning led to better outcomes than ventilators

• The World Health Organization promoted the use of ventilators as a way to purportedly curtail the spread of virus-laden aerosols, thereby protecting other patients and hospital staff. In other words, suspected COVID patients were sacrificed to “protect” others

• The matter becomes even more perverse when you consider the fact that many “COVID cases” were patients who merely tested positive using faulty PCR testing. Hospitals also received massive incentives to diagnose patients with COVID and put them on a vent

By May 2020, it had become apparent that the standard practice of putting COVID-19 patients on mechanical ventilation with ventilators was a death sentence.

As early as April 9, 2020, Business Insider reported

that 80% of COVID-19 patients in New York City who were placed on ventilators died, which caused a number of doctors to question their use.

The Associated Press

also publicized similar reports from China and the U.K. A U.K. report put the figure at 66%, while a small study from Wuhan, China, put the ratio of deaths at 86%. Data presented by attorney Thomas Renz in 2021 showed that in Texas hospitals, 84.9% of patients died after more than 96 hours on a ventilator.

The lowest figure I’ve seen is 50%.

So, somewhere between 50% and 86% of all ventilated COVID patients died. Compare that to historical prepandemic ratios, where 30% to 40% of ventilated patients died.

Meanwhile, doctors at UChicago Medicine reported

getting “truly remarkable” results using high-flow nasal cannulas in lieu of ventilators. As noted in a press release:

“High-flow nasal cannulas, or HFNCs, are non-invasive nasal prongs that sit below the nostrils and blow large volumes of warm, humidified oxygen into the nose and lungs.

A team from UChicago Medicine’s emergency room took 24 COVID-19 patients who were in respiratory distress and gave them HFNCs instead of putting them on ventilators. The patients all fared extremely well, and only one of them required intubation after 10 days …

‘Avoiding intubation is key,’ [UChicago Medicine’s Emergency Department’s medical director Dr. Thomas] Spiegel said. ‘Most of our colleagues around the city are not doing this, but I sure wish other ERs would take a look at this technique closely.'”

The UChicago team also endorsed proning, meaning lying in the face-down position, which automatically improves oxygenation and helps alleviate shortness of breath.

Yet despite these early indications that mechanical ventilation was as unnecessary as it was disastrous, placing COVID patients on life support is standard of care to this day, more than three years later. How could that be?

In a September 30, 2020, Substack article,

journalist Jordan Schachtel described how China and the World Health Organization came up with and nurtured the idea that mechanical ventilation was the correct and necessary first-line response to COVID:

“In early March, when COVID-19 was ravaging western Europe and sounding alarm bells in the United States, the WHO released COVID-19 provider guidance

documents to healthcare workers.

Citing experience ‘based on current knowledge of the situation in China,’ the WHO recommended mechanical ventilators as an early intervention for treating COVID-19 patients. The guidance recommended

escalating quickly, if not immediately, to mechanical ventilation.

In doing so, they cited the guidance being presented by Chinese medical journals, which published papers in January and February claiming that ‘Chinese expert consensus’ called for ‘invasive mechanical ventilation’ as the ‘first choice’ for people with moderate to severe respiratory distress.

The WHO further justified this approach by claiming that the less invasive positive air pressure machines could result in the spread of aerosols, potentially infecting health care workers with the virus.”

That last paragraph is perhaps the most shocking reason for why millions of COVID patients were sacrificed. They wanted to isolate the virus inside the mechanical vent machine rather than risk aerosol transmission.

In other words, they put patients to death in order to “save” staff and other, presumably non-COVID, patients. If you missed this news back in 2020, you’re not alone. In the flurry of daily reporting, it escaped many of us. Here’s the description given in the WHO’s guidance document.

Strangely enough, while the U.S. quickly began clamoring for ventilators, China started relying on them less, and instead exported them in huge quantities. As noted by Schachtel, “China was making a fortune off of manufacturing and exporting ventilators (many of which did not work correctly and even killed patients

) around the world.”

That ventilation and sedation were used to protect hospital staff was also highlighted by The Wall Street Journal in a December 20, 2020, article,

which noted:

“Last spring, with less known about the disease, doctors often pre-emptively put patients on ventilators or gave powerful sedatives largely abandoned in recent years. The aim was to save the seriously ill and protect hospital staff from COVID-19 …

Last spring, doctors put patients on ventilators partly to limit contagion at a time when it was less clear how the virus spread, when protective masks and gowns were in short supply.

Doctors could have employed other kinds of breathing support devices that don’t require risky sedation, but early reports suggested patients using them could spray dangerous amounts of virus into the air, said Theodore Iwashyna, a critical-care physician at University of Michigan and Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals in Ann Arbor, Mich.

At the time, he said, doctors and nurses feared the virus would spread through hospitals. “We were intubating sick patients very early. Not for the patients’ benefit, but in order to control the epidemic and to save other patients,” Dr. Iwashyna said ‘That felt awful.'”

As noted in a January 23, 2023, Substack article,

in which James Lyons-Weiler revisits the ventilator issue and the shocking reason behind it, “euthanizing humans is illegal. Especially for the benefit of other patients. It should feel awful.”

The matter becomes even more perverse when you consider the fact that many “COVID cases” were patients who merely tested positive using faulty PCR testing.

They didn’t have COVID but were vented anyway, thanks to the baseless theory that you could have COVID-19 and be infectious without symptoms. Hospitals also received massive incentives to diagnose patients with COVID — whether they actually had it or not — and to put them on a vent.

Some of you may remember Erin Olszewski, a retired Army sergeant and frontline nurse who blew the whistle on the horrific mistreatment of COVID patients at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, New York, which was “the epicenter of the epicenter” of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S.

She described

a number of problems at Elmhurst, including the disproportionate mortality rate among people of color, the controversial rule surrounding Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) orders, lax personal protective equipment (PPE) standards, and the failure to segregate COVID-positive and COVID-negative patients, thereby ensuring maximum spread of the disease among noninfected patients coming in with other health problems.

Olszewski also highlighted the fact that COVID-negative patients were being listed as confirmed positive and placed on mechanical ventilation, thus artificially inflating the numbers while more or less condemning the patient to death from lung injury.

Making matters worse, many of the doctors treating these patients were not trained in critical care. One of the “doctors” on the COVID floor was a dentist. Residents (medical students) were also relied on, even though they were not properly trained in how to safely ventilate, and were unfamiliar with the potent drugs used.

At the time, Olszewski blamed financial incentives for turning the hospital into a killing field. Elmhurst, a public hospital, received $29,000 extra for a COVID-19 patient receiving ventilation, over and above other treatments, she said.

If Elmhurst had infection control in mind when ventilating patients, they certainly didn’t follow through, as COVID-positive and negative patients were comingled — a strategy Olszewski suspected was intended to drive up the COVID case and mortality numbers.

Others have also highlighted the role of financial incentives. In early April 2020, Minnesota family physician and state Sen. Scott Jensen explained:

“Medicare has determined that if you have a COVID-19 admission to the hospital you’ll get paid $13,000. If that COVID-19 patient goes on a ventilator, you get $39,000; three times as much.”

Former CDC director Robert Redfield also admitted that financial policies may indeed have resulted in artificially elevated hospitalization rates and death toll statistics. As reported August 1, 2020, by the Washington Examiner:

“… Redfield agreed that some hospitals have a monetary incentive to overcount coronavirus deaths … ‘I think you’re correct in that we’ve seen this in other disease processes, too.

Really, in the HIV epidemic, somebody may have a heart attack but also have HIV — the hospital would prefer the [classification] for HIV because there’s greater reimbursement,’ Redfield said

during a House panel hearing … when asked by Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer about potential ‘perverse incentives.’ Redfield continued: ‘So, I do think there’s some reality to that …”

In addition to receiving exorbitant payments for COVID admissions and putting patients on a ventilator, hospitals are also paid extra for:

• COVID testing for all patients

• COVID diagnoses

• Use of remdesivir

• COVID deaths

When everything is said and done, a COVID patient can be “worth” as much as $250,000, but for the maximum payment, they have to leave in a body bag. If we know anything, it’s that profit motives can make people commit atrocious acts, and that certainly appears true when it comes to COVID treatment.

In the U.S., hospitals also LOST federal funding if they failed or refused to administer remdesivir and/or ventilation, which further incentivized them to go along with what amounts to malpractice at best, and murder at worst.

“We need harsh, hard investigations with consequences — and activists need to write bills tying the hands of protocolists to prevent them from ever again killing one patient to hypothetically save another — under threat of a murder charge.” ~ James Lyons-Weiler

There’s also evidence that certain hospital systems, and perhaps all of them, have waived patients’ rights, making anyone diagnosed with COVID a virtual prisoner of the hospital, with no ability to exercise informed consent. As noted by Citizens Journal in December 2021:

“We now see government-dictated medical care at its worst in our history since the federal government mandated these ineffective and dangerous treatments for COVID-19, and then created financial incentives for hospitals and doctors to use only those ‘approved’ (and paid for) approaches.

Our formerly trusted medical community of hospitals and hospital-employed medical staff have effectively become ‘bounty hunters’ for your life.

Patients need to now take unprecedented steps to avoid going into the hospital for COVID-19. Patients need to take active steps to plan before getting sick to use early home-based treatment of COVID-19 that can help you save your life.”

There’s no telling how many COVID patients have already lost their lives to this medical malpractice, and it must stop. Patient rights must be reestablished and be irrevocable, we need to hold decision-makers to account, and lastly, we have to somehow ensure that our hospitals cannot be turned into killing fields for profit ever again. As noted by Lyons-Weiler in his January 2023 article:

“We need harsh, hard investigations with consequences — and activists need to write bills tying the hands of protocolists to prevent them from ever again killing one patient to hypothetically save another — under threat of a murder charge.

We need legislation for ‘on-demand’ scripts for off-label medicines that patients want for potentially deadly infections — regardless of ‘FDA Approval’ (FDA does not, by definition, have to ‘approve’ off-label scripts.”

While SARS-CoV-2 has become milder with each iteration, I still believe it’s a good idea to treat suspected COVID at first signs of symptoms — especially if you’ve gotten the COVID jab. COVID hospitalization and death are now “pandemics of the vaccinated,” to reuse and rephrase one of the globalist cabal’s favorite mantras.

Perhaps it’s the common cold or a regular influenza, maybe it’s the latest COVID variant. Either way, since they’re now virtually indistinguishable, at least in the early stages of infection, your best bet is to treat symptoms as you would treat earlier forms of COVID. Treatment for long-COVID also overlaps with the protocols for SARS-CoV-2 infection. Early treatment protocols with demonstrated effectiveness include:

• The Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance’s (FLCCC’s) prevention and early at-home treatment protocol. They also have an in-hospital protocol and long-term management guidance for long-haul COVID-19 syndrome. You can find a listing of doctors who can prescribe ivermectin and other necessary medicines on the FLCCC website.

• The AAPS protocol

• Dr. Tess Lawrie’s World Council for Health protocol

• America’s Frontline Doctors

Based on my review of these protocols, I’ve developed the following summary of the treatment specifics I believe are the easiest and most effective.

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The information on this website is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Dr. Mercola and his community. Dr. Mercola encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional. The subscription fee being requested is for access to the articles and information posted on this site, and is not being paid for any individual medical advice.

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• Freshwater fish in the U.S. has been rendered so toxic by environmental pollutants that even eating one fish a year could be dangerous

• EWG researchers analyzed data from more than 500 fish fillets collected across the U.S. from 2013 to 2015

• The fish fillets, collected from U.S. streams, rivers and lakes, had a median level of total PFAS of 9,500 nanograms per kilogram

• Fish from the Great Lakes were even more toxic, coming in with a median PFAS level of 11,800 nanograms per kilogram

• Consuming a single serving of freshwater fish annually equates to a month of drinking water contaminated with PFOS — one type of PFAS — at a concentration of 48 parts per trillion

• In addition to freshwater fish, toxic PFAS are widely found in air, surface water, groundwater, drinking water, soil and other types of food, food packaging, personal care products and more

Once a healthy mainstay of native diets, freshwater fish in the U.S. have been rendered toxic by environmental pollutants. Even eating one fish a year could be dangerous, due to the high levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, they contain.

The research, conducted by scientists with the Environmental Working Group (EWG), revealed that consuming a single serving of freshwater fish annually equates to a month of drinking water contaminated with PFOS — one type of PFAS — at a concentration of 48 parts per trillion.

Given that people in many vulnerable U.S. communities still depend on freshwater fish as a key part of their diets, public health could be at risk. “These test results are breathtaking,” Scott Faber, EWG’s senior vice president for government affairs, said in a news release. “Eating one bass is equivalent to drinking PFOS-tainted water for a month.”

For the study, EWG researchers analyzed data from more than 500 fish fillets collected across the U.S. from 2013 to 2015.

The fish fillets, collected from U.S. streams, rivers and lakes, had a median level of total PFAS of 9,500 nanograms per kilogram. Fish from the Great Lakes were even more toxic, coming in with a median PFAS level of 11,800 nanograms per kilogram.

“People who consume freshwater fish, especially those who catch and eat fish regularly, are at risk of alarming levels of PFAS in their bodies,” study author and EWG senior scientist, David Andrews, Ph.D., explained. “Growing up, I went fishing every week and ate those fish. But now when I see fish, all I think about is PFAS contamination.”

Levels of PFAS in freshwater fish were 280 times higher than PFAS levels detected by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in tests of seafood samples and processed foods from grocery stores. Further, the data suggest that eating a single serving of freshwater fish could expose you to a similar amount of PFAS as consuming store-bought fish daily for a year.

PFAS are estimated to be in the blood of more than 98% of Americans.

While production of PFOA ended in 2015, DuPont and other companies have substituted similar chemicals in the production of nonstick cookware and other products. In May 2015, more than 200 scientists from 40 countries signed the Madrid Statement, which warns about the harms of PFAS and documents the following potential health effects of exposure:

• Liver toxicity

• Disruption of lipid metabolism and the immune and endocrine systems

• Adverse neurobehavioral effects

• Neonatal toxicity and death

• Tumors in multiple organ systems

• Testicular and kidney cancers

• Liver malfunction

• Hypothyroidism

• High cholesterol

• Ulcerative colitis

• Reduced birth weight and size

• Obesity

• Decreased immune response to vaccines

• Reduced hormone levels and delayed puberty

Known as “forever chemicals” because they’re so persistent in the environment, PFAS are common contaminants not only in freshwater fish but also in other food, food packaging and personal care products. Even at very low doses, drinking water contaminated with PFAS has been linked to immune system suppression and an increased risk of certain cancers. Reproductive and developmental problems are also linked to PFAS.

EWG compiled a map that shows the location of 41,828 industrial and municipal sites in the U.S. known to, or suspected of, using or releasing PFAS.

Among them are landfills and wastewater treatment plants, airports and areas where firefighting foam has been used.

Firefighting foam liberally used by the South Dakota Air National Guard and Sioux Falls Fire Department decades ago is the source of significant pollution to the drinking water of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, residents. Nineteen municipal wells representing 28% of the city’s water coming from the Big Sioux aquifer were shut down in 2018 as a result.

“For decades, polluters have dumped as much PFAS as they wanted into our rivers, streams, lakes and bays with impunity. We must turn off the tap of PFAS pollution from industrial discharges, which affect more and more Americans every day,” Faber said.

Also in 2018, the Department of Defense reported that at least 126 drinking water systems near military bases were also contaminated with PFAS, due to their use in firefighting foam.

According to a 2016 Harvard study, meanwhile, 16.5 million Americans have detectable levels of at least one kind of PFAS in their drinking water, and about 6 million Americans are drinking water that contains PFAS at or above the EPA safety level.

Yet, according to EWG, more than 200 million Americans may be drinking water containing PFAS at a concentration of 1 part per trillion (ppt) or higher.

EWG has endorsed making 1 ppt the standard upper safe level for PFAS in drinking water.

“We know drinking water is a major source of exposure of these toxic chemicals,” vice president for science investigations at EWG, Olga Naidenko, Ph.D., said. “… PFAS pollution is affecting even more Americans than we previously estimated. PFAS are likely detectable in all major water supplies in the U.S., almost certainly in all that use surface water.”

PFAS do not break down in water or soil and can be carried over great distances by wind or rain, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR).

PFAS have since been found in air, surface water, groundwater, drinking water, soil and food, and humans can be exposed via all of these sources. Unbeknownst to many, it all started during the quest for an atomic bomb. Marko Filipovic, Department of Environmental Science and Analytical Chemistry (ACES) at Stockholm University, explained:

“In the early 1940s, during World War II, the Manhattan project required new inert materials for separation of uranium isotopes via gas diffusion from their corrosive hexafluorides. Fluorinated materials were uniquely suited for the task. The Manhattan project gave great momentum to the development of new fluorine based chemicals.

Ever since, the fluorine industry has grown exponentially and a large variety of poly- or per-fluorinated organochemicals have become ingredients in the products of everyday life.

The success story of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) started thus with the accidental synthesis of new chemicals and chemists serendipitously discovering the extraordinary physical-chemical properties of these new materials.”

PFAS on farmland is another major issue, one that’s been called a “slow-motion disaster.”

The source of the contamination on many agricultural lands is biosolids — toxic human waste sludge — that’s marketed as an affordable fertilizer. Maine is the first state to comprehensively test for PFAS on farmland due to the spreading of sewage sludge, but it shouldn’t be the last. In the U.S., half of wastewater sludge gets applied to the land.

According to The Maine Monitor:

“Consequently, Maine has had to pioneer policy actions, moving to implement recommendations of a year-long PFAS task force. The next policy step must be passage of LD 1911, which would ban land application of sludge and the land application or sale of compost derived from sludge.

Two dozen companies and municipalities are licensed to convert sludge into compost, despite the state’s own finding that 89% of finished compost samples exceeded the screening level for PFOA, a common PFAS compound.

… Dr. Lani Graham, a retired physician and former director of Maine’s Bureau of Public Health, likens PFAS to lead contamination, being another ‘long developing environmental disaster’ with echoes of the tobacco and opioid public health crises.

PFAS manufacturers, such as DuPont and 3M, followed a similar corporate playbook. Despite internal research from the 1960s onward revealing the toxicity and longevity of PFAS compounds, the corporations continued production, knowingly exposing workers and contaminating water supplies.”

If you don’t eat freshwater fish, it doesn’t mean you’re safe from PFAS exposure in your food. Far from it. PFAS accumulates in soil and water and is transferred into your food. Proof of this can be seen in food testing, which in 2017 found PFAS chemicals in 10 of the 91 foods tested.

Chocolate cake had the highest amount — 250 times above the advisory limit for drinking water. (There’s currently no limit for food.) Nearly half of the meat and fish tested also contained double the advisory limit for water. Leafy greens grown within 10 miles of a PFAS plant also contained very high amounts.

As you might expect, PFAS also accumulate in your body, with devastating effects. For instance, middle-aged women who had higher blood levels of PFAS were at the greatest risk of developing high blood pressure compared to their peers who had lower levels.

In addition to avoiding freshwater fish, you can cut down on PFAS exposure by making informed decisions about your food, cookware, housewares and more. Here are several strategies that can help. You may find additional helpful tips in EWG’s “Guide to Avoiding PFAS.”

• Pretreated or stain-repellent treatments — Opt out of these treatments on clothing, furniture and carpeting. Clothing advertised as “breathable” is typically treated with polytetrafluoroethylene, a synthetic fluoropolymer.

• Products treated with flame retardant chemicals — This includes furniture, carpet, mattresses and baby items. Instead, opt for naturally less flammable materials such as leather, wool and cotton.

• Fast food and carry-out foods — The containers are typically treated.

• Microwave popcorn — PFAS may be present in the inner coating of the bag and may migrate to the oil from the packaging during heating. Instead, use “old-fashioned” stovetop non-GMO popcorn.

• Nonstick cookware and other treated kitchen utensils — Healthier options include ceramic and enameled cast iron cookware, both of which are durable, easy to clean and completely inert, which means they won’t release any harmful chemicals into your home.

• Personal care products containing PTFE, “fluoro” or “perfluoro” ingredients such as Oral B Glide floss — The EWG Skin Deep database is an excellent source to search for healthier personal care options.

• Unfiltered tap water — Unfortunately, your choices are limited when it comes to avoiding PFAS in drinking water. Either you must filter your water or get water from a clean source. Although you may think that opting for bottled water is safe, PFAS are not regulated in bottled water, so there’s absolutely no guarantee that it’ll be free of these or other chemicals.

  Unlike a high-quality carbon filtration system, most common water filters available in supermarkets will not remove PFAS. The New Jersey Drinking Water Quality Institute recommends using granulated activated carbon “or an equally efficient technology” to remove PFC chemicals such as PFOA and PFOS from your drinking water. Activated carbon has been shown to remove about 90% of these chemicals.

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Disclaimer: The entire contents of this website are based upon the opinions of Dr. Mercola, unless otherwise noted. Individual articles are based upon the opinions of the respective author, who retains copyright as marked.

The information on this website is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Dr. Mercola and his community. Dr. Mercola encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional. The subscription fee being requested is for access to the articles and information posted on this site, and is not being paid for any individual medical advice.

If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition, consult your health care professional before using products based on this content.

• Ivor Cummins interviews Dr. Reid Sheftall about the many inconsistencies surrounding SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and related mitigation measures

• SARS-CoV-2 has an infection mortality rate that is equal to or less than the flu, making school closures unnecessary because they’re not closed down for flu, which is a much deadlier disease than COVID-19 in that age group

• Asymptomatic people are being tested for COVID-19 at unprecedented rates, a waste of resources that goes against good medical practice

• Sheftall studied mask usage extensively and found mask mandates did not noticeably change the number of cases or deaths the way they should if they actually reduce transmissibility

• Countries that used minimal masks and did not have mandated lockdowns were not worse off than neighboring countries with mask mandates and mandatory lockdowns

• “There’s clearly, in plain sight, huge worldwide organizations who need this crisis and who are fermenting panic for eight months now,” Cummins said. “Why they’re doing it you can argue but the fact that they’re doing it is plain and obvious”

ℹ️ From Dr. Joseph Mercola

Since COVID-19 first entered the scene, exchange of ideas has basically been outlawed. By sharing my views and those from various experts throughout the pandemic on COVID treatments and the experimental COVID jabs, I became a main target of the White House, the political establishment and the global cabal.

Propaganda and pervasive censorship have been deployed to seize control over every part of your life, including your health, finances and food supply. The major media are key players and have been instrumental in creating and fueling fear.

I am republishing this article in its original form so that you can see how the progression unfolded.

Originally published: December 29, 2020

Ivor Cummins is a biochemical engineer with a background in medical device engineering and leading teams in complex problem-solving. On his website, TheFatEmperor.com,

he offers guidance on how to decode science to transform your health. In a podcast from December 11, 2020, he interviewed Dr. Reid Sheftall about SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Sheftall is an intelligent surgeon, having scored in the 99.95 percentile on the SATs and off the scale on his medical board and surgical board exams. He begins by explaining that the SARS-CoV-2 is only 100 nanometers in diameter, which is smaller by one-fourth than SARS-2 virus, which is only 100 nanometers in diameter, which is smaller, by one-fourth, than the shortest wavelength that we can see in the visible spectrum.

He’s been using social media to write essays about different aspects of the virus and the policies that were enacted because of what he calls “mistakes that were made early on” in the pandemic. Here are seven of Sheftall’s predictions and corrections, along with the date in which he made them, which are covered in more detail during the interview:

1. SARS-CoV-2 has an infection mortality rate that is equal to or less than the flu (March 15).

2. Masks won’t reduce the transmissibility (March 15), but experts still say they do.

3. Lockdowns not only will not work, but will cause much death and destruction, including loss of jobs and insurance, life savings and other resources, up to and including loss of life (March 17). Experts are still lobbying for use of lockdowns.

4. We should not close schools because we don’t close them for the flu, which is a much deadlier disease than SARS-2 in that age group (March 18).

5. The reason the cases and deaths are so low in Asian countries is not because of better testing, tracing and lockdowns, as the experts have said and continue to say, but is because of “immunity in place” due to cross reactivity of SARS-2 with previously encountered coronaviruses. This is mediated by cross reacting memory B and T cells, secretory IgA (August 10, not yet proven).

6. We’re not experiencing “second waves” in the U.S. They are first waves in different parts of the country as the virus marches through different climate types in different regions (August 10).

7. There are not 40 million cases in the U.S. There are at least 160 million (October 17).

Early on during the pandemic, infection mortality rate claims varied from 2.7% to 7%, with most being in the 4% range. According to Sheftall, that’s “about 40 times too high” and ended up causing panic and fear in the public. He figured out the infection mortality rate was wrong because he noticed something important: The wide fluctuations in mortality rates didn’t add up:

“As a surgeon, we noticed that surgical outcomes are very close. From a very good surgeon to a very mediocre surgeon, the mortality and morbidity is very close.

Yet, when I heard the information about what had happened in Italy, where 7%, supposedly, of the people infected were dying and in Germany, where it was much lower, I’m thinking that doesn’t make sense because the Italians would call their German colleagues and find out if something was being done differently and change something, and the rate should be very close to the same. So, I knew there was a problem.”

Sheftall suggested that selection bias was being used in the counting of cases, and organizations such as the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were drastically undercounting the number of people who were infected, which inflated the mortality rate.

Sheftall looked for data in which every case had been counted, ending up with a cruise ship, in which every person had been tested, and a small town in Germany that had also tested all residents. “When I crunched the numbers, the infection fatality rate came out to 0.14%, so I knew … there were some gross errors going on.”

Sheftall posted his findings on Facebook, only to be told he was wrong. He then wrote letters to Fox and CNN, hoping to share the information with the public, but he didn’t hear back.

“What happened, unfortunately, is that everybody accepted those numbers as gospel, if you will, and proceeded to make models that were way off. Epidemiologists appeared on television, and they were way off.

The general population, as I said before, began to panic and then the politicians were able to — and I’m not saying they were nefarious in this — but they were able to institute some policies, which were extremely destructive … I don’t think the general public would have agreed to lockdowns, for example, if they had known that the infection fatality rate is 0.1% … the same as the flu.”

Other experts, like Stanford University’s disease prevention chairman Dr. John Ioannidis — an epidemiologist who has made a name for himself by exposing bad science — have also criticized global lockdown measures, saying they were implemented based on flawed modeling and grossly unreliable data. Like Sheftall, Ioannidis suggested the infection fatality rate was actually 0.05% to 1%, with a median of about 0.25%.

Sheftall cites COVID-19 survival rates by age, posted by the CDC September 10, 2020, which are as follows:

• Ages birth to 19: 99.997%

• Ages 20 to 49: 99.98%

• Ages 50 to 69: 99.5%

• Ages 70 and up: 94.6%

This translates into a 0.1% infection fatality rate, using the CDC’s own numbers — and the CDC is one of the agencies that cited a 4% infection fatality rate early on. Sheftall couldn’t find data on the survival rate of school-aged children from 5 to 17 years, but he did uncover that there were 51 COVID-19 deaths reported in that age range from March 1 to September 10, 2020.

“Now there are 56.4 million students in elementary, middle and high school in the United States so that means the chances by population, not by infection but by population, are less than 1 in a million per year for a student in school, and that’s very important because we’ve shut down the schools in America, which causes a lot of problems,” he said.

Given these numbers, shutting down schools “makes absolutely no sense,” as he noted that every year more than 200 school-aged children, on average, die from the flu during a five-month flu season. “So, if you want to be consistent … if you’re going to close the schools for SARS-CoV-2 you must close them every year for the flu because it’s actually much more severe in the school-age group.”

But closing schools has consequences, as has been made readily apparent during the pandemic. Interruptions in learning are common — “they did a survey in Boston and only half the children were logging in” to virtual learning, Sheftall said, while others don’t have money for a computer or internet connection. Other issues that may have been picked up on at school, like problems with vision or hearing, or cases of abuse, may also go unnoticed.

According to The Atlantic’s COVID Tracking Project, more than 230.3 million COVID-19 tests have been conducted in the U.S. as of December 20, 2020,

which includes an unknown number of tests conducted on people with no symptoms.

The costs for such testing could be used for a more productive purpose, according to Sheftall. Cummins also notes that “it’s kind of unethical and it’s against good practice” to test asymptomatic people at such a massive rate. “The whole basis of medicine,” he says, is to test people with symptoms so you can find out what’s wrong and treat them accordingly. Sheftall continues:

“In 2017 to 2018 … between 70 and 80 million people in America got the flu … nobody noticed for the most part and no one was tested. I’m a doctor and I vaguely remember that it was a bad flu season. That was it. And yet with COVID we’re testing so many people you wouldn’t believe it.”

During a June 8, 2020, press briefing, Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead for the COVID-19 pandemic, made it very clear that asymptomatic transmission is very rare, meaning an individual who tests positive but does not exhibit symptoms is highly unlikely to transmit live virus to others.

A study in Nature Communications also found “there was no evidence of transmission from asymptomatic positive persons to traced close contacts.”

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 tests are problematic in and of themselves.

These positive reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests have been used as the justification for keeping large portions of the world locked down for the better part of 2020, despite the fact that PCR tests have proven remarkably unreliable with high false result rates.

A positive test does not actually mean that an active infection is present. The PCR swab collects RNA from your nasal cavity. This RNA is then reverse transcribed into DNA. However, the genetic snippets are so small they must be amplified in order to become discernible.

What this does is amplify any, even insignificant sequences of viral DNA that might be present to the point that the test reads “positive,” even if the viral load is extremely low or the virus is inactive. According to Sheftall:

“When we see all these positive cases, some of them are older than they’re letting on. They’re calling them new cases. The test looks for messenger RNA fragments in the oral pharynx, OK? It’s the swab test. It’s an antigen test, OK, as opposed to an antibody test.

And those fragments can stay in there for months after the patient has recovered. That’s No. 1. And No. 2, think of the name — it’s polymerase chain reaction. The PCR test is an amplification test. It can take a tiny fragment and amplify it into a billion fragments …

There are different types of immunological responses to a pathogen, one of which is the barrier immunity. And you can have fragments of messenger RNA in your oral pharynx and have never gotten sick from the disease, never even registered on the scale, no bullet, no signal, no nothing because the barrier immunity injured the viruses early on and broke them into pieces, and then the PCR picks it up as a new test.”

Sheftall also compiled daily new deaths for six countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Sweden. All of them have similar death curves, despite whether they instituted lockdowns or not. He also found a graph (pictured at 40 minutes in the video) in which scientists compared the number of cases in a region with how stringent the measures were by the government, including degree of lockdown, group restrictions and mask mandates.

“You can see that there’s no reverse correlation like you would expect … if the measures are not stringent you should see more cases, according to their thinking … [but] it’s the exact opposite of what the people were saying,” Sheftall said. In fact, the graph largely shows lower cases when less stringent measures were taken.

“It’s the same with mask introductions,” Cummins added. “If you look at around 10 or 12 countries where they brought in mask mandates, there was no impact on the curve … whatsoever so the empirical science of our own eyes is screaming at us: Masks and lockdowns don’t really move the needle much, maybe a little, but no one wants to know. It’s an ideology now. It’s a religion.”

Sheftall studied mask usage extensively and found mask mandates did not noticeably change the number of cases or deaths the way they should if they actually reduce transmissibility. Countries that used minimal masks were not worse off than neighboring countries with mask mandates.

“Due to statements by experts and CNN commercials claiming that masks prevent viral spread, mass hysteria descended on the world over the wearing of masks,” he said. There have been cases of hot coffee being thrown in the faces of people not wearing masks, fines issued and other hysteria, over a measure that’s not proven to work.

In fact, in the first randomized controlled trial of more than 6,000 individuals to assess the effectiveness of surgical face masks against SARS-CoV-2 infection found masks did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection. Among mask wearers, 1.8% ended up testing positive for SARS-CoV-2, compared to 2.1% among controls.

When they removed the people who did not adhere to proper mask use, the results remained the same — 1.8%, which suggests adherence makes no significant difference.

When the science flies in the face of the restrictions being imposed, it becomes clear that there’s a sinister hidden agenda. Many of the global elite need this crisis and have been “fermenting panic for the past eight months. Why they’re doing it you can argue but the fact that they’re doing it is plain and obvious,” Cummins said, adding:

“The WHO drove the masks when it was utterly antiscientific. They’re not stupid, so why did they do that? The WHO equally knows the science on lockdowns and the analyses but they remorselessly recently pushed lockdowns again … they’re imploring governments to lock down hard, and they have to know that that’s the wrong thing to do.

So you can go to the World Economic Forum (WEF). They’ve made it clear that this is an enormous opportunity to bring in the Great Reset and to retool the world.”

Ultimately, Cummins believes there’s not one “single evil genius stroking a cat” that orchestrated a conspiracy, but rather COVID-19 presented an opportunity that multiple entities have used to further their own agendas. What you can do now is keep your eyes open and your ears tuned to the science, so you don’t fall victim to the unnecessary panic and fear they are seeking to cause:

“China certainly exploited a new nasty virus and saw it as an opportunity to send the fat, lazy, soft Westerners into a tailspin. Why not? And the WEF has been very clear on its goals, and it’s remorseless in driving them.

The WHO, the U.N., the European vaccine alliances, you know, have plans for vaccine passports by 2021, and they were published a year or two ago. I mean imagine you wanted vaccine and health passports by 2021 and then corona came along.

Can you imagine how you’d feel? You would salivate, you would see an enormous opportunity to move forward long plans and get them done in six months. There’s no conspiracy theory. It’s just unfortunate that a vast array of very powerful bodies all pretty much see enormous opportunity in Sars-CoV-2, and then they all probably, to greater or lesser extents, they talk to each other and communicate.

So, it’s like everyone’s got the big payday now and I think what we see is the result of … this huge remorseless general push toward hysteria because it will enable everyone’s goals and the whole of the pharmaceutical industry is salivating. It’s just one of those phenomena that unfortunately has been exploited beyond belief.”

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