Opinion: Boosters for All Adults?
From eNewsletter 11/24/2021
DID YOU KNOW that the largest study ever performed examining physical activity and anxiety, following 400,000 individuals during a period of 21 years, states that having a physically active lifestyle is associated with a substantially lower risk of developing anxiety disorders among both men and women? The results, published in the September issue of Frontiers of Psychiatry, offer a sobering reminder that maintaining your physical activity during holiday season is of the utmost importance, as the holidays brings upon more stress and anxiety than at any other time of the year.
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Have a happy, healthy Thanksgiving Holiday! Steve and Bonnie Minsky
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COVID-19 UPDATE
Steve: After updating their COVID-19 statistics in October, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledged that a staggering 146.6 million people in the United States have been infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and have survived it, comprising at least 44 percent of the U.S. population. Other sources estimate as much as 188 million Americans may have been infected. The COVID-19 vaccine program should have been one of numerous strategies to eradicate the pandemic. Unfortunately, it has been the only strategy. Except for dramatically reducing severe illness and death (The Brownstone Institute, a group who is pushing for more acknowledgement of natural immunity, even agrees), the vaccine strategy has not led to the relief and freedoms we were promised by leaders worldwide, and we are two years into the pandemic! Instead, those who have been fully vaccinated are being asked to boost. This is a myopic strategy that is doomed to fail for the following reasons:
You cannot vaccinate your way out of a pandemic. You especially cannot control a pandemic with a vaccine that does not prevent transmission.
A vaccine is supposed to introduce the immune system to a pathogen or piece of a pathogen, such as the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, not completely bombard it every six months.
The booster is not an update. It only addresses the original variant, not the delta variant. We were told that vaccine makers would be able to provide updates quickly for existing SARS-CoV-2 variants.
It has been said by numerous public health experts that there are millions of doses that will expire if they are not used soon, which is one reason health officials are pushing boosters so hard. Why not send them to countries that are woefully unvaccinated instead?
The chances that most of the vaccinated world has been at some point naturally boosted by exposure to SARS-CoV-2 is highly likely, which means that you would need boosters even less. The CDC even acknowledges the efficacy of natural immunity, which makes the new booster recommendation so puzzling.
Most importantly, there still has been no utterance of doing everything we can to make the world's population healthier with optimal nutrition, mitigating chronic stress, increasing physical activity, and supplementing to boost the immune system and prevent micronutrient malnutrition. Healthy people usually don't need boosters. Their adaptive immunity from either the two-dose mRNA vaccine or natural infection is able to recognize and snuff out SARS-CoV-2 before it becomes severe.
Want some cold-hearted reality? Dr. Mark Dybul, a immunology professor at Georgetown University Medical Center’s Department of Medicine told Fortune Daily last week: “Sadly, every prediction I’ve made has pretty much come true. I hope I’m wrong this time, but I think by March, April, May, we will have a fully vaccine-resistant variant. There’s simply no way you can have such low rates of vaccination around the world with the virus ping-ponging between vaccinated and unvaccinated people. I’m an immunologist". Would this not make a booster superfluous? For all the reasons mentioned, I do not agree with the FDA and CDC's decision to give Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for booster shots for all adults 18 years and older. The booster should only target those older than 65 who are at high risk, anyone 18 and older with COVID-19 comorbidities (i.e. obesity, diabetes), and those who are severely immunocompromised. NOTE: the change in booster policy is an EUA, which cannot be mandated. And now for the rest of recent research on the pandemic... Yet Another Reason to Avoid Hospitals for COVID-19 Renowned critical care doctor Dr. Paul Marik has successfully treated COVID patients for the past 18 months using a combination of highly effective treatments that he co-created, called the MATH+ Protocol. He has just been banned by Sentara Healthcare from continuing to use those treatments to save the lives of COVID patients at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. In response, he has filed a lawsuit against Sentara Healthcare for preventing COVID patients from receiving appropriate care and terminally ill patients from receiving investigatory treatments, which contravenes Virginia law. This is very concerning given the success that many have had receiving the MATH+ Protocol. Doctors for decades have successfully used medications off-label. All of a sudden, it is not being allowed during a pandemic? Watch Dr. Marik's sobering account of how these life-saving tools were taken away from him needlessly. Those on SSRI Antidepressants Less Likely to Die A large study covering health care centers all over the country found that patients admitted to the hospital for COVID-19 were less likely to die if they were on the SSRI antidepressant fluoxetine. The JAMA Network Open study did not explain why this occurred, but we can tell you. For reasons not known, COVID-19 can induce a flood of serotonin, which causes adverse effects, especially in the gastrointestinal tract. SSRIs regulate serotonin, so it would make sense that those taking the medication would not get the extreme rush of serotonin. This is important to note because there are ways to lower the amount of serotonin being released during COVID-19 infection without having to resort to SSRIs. This is one of the medications rescinded by the hospital system where the aforementioned Dr. Marick had privileges. Vaccine Dramatically Reduces Severe Illness and Death A Qatari study published in Medrxiv joined a litany of other countries showing that while breakthrough infections are common after full mRNA vaccination, severe illness requiring hospitalization and death are exceedingly rare. Qatar took a similar approach to Israel, so their data are being closely monitored worldwide. Data from the North Carolina COVID-19 Surveillance System and COVID-19 Vaccine Management System covering 10.6 million residents statewide claim that two mRNA vaccines are remarkably effective and durable in reducing the risks of hospitalization and death, according to published data in Medrxiv. mRNA Vaccine-Derived Myocarditis/Myopericarditis A study in Medrxiv found that while both the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines cause myocarditis in a small number of persons, Moderna had a higher number of those affected than Pfizer. In the study of the Moderna vaccine, most cases were in 18-24 year-olds, up to 7 days after administration, and almost always after the second dose. France and Germany recently joined a list of numerous countries who will not authorize Moderna for those 30 and younger. The FDA recently asked for more time to decide whether to approve Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine for use in children ages 12 to 17 because of these concerns.