Normal is Needed
Feel free to stop reading if you’ve heard this before… (not really, I need the royalties)
Just so you know who you are dealing with …
I have called mass masking stupid, and meant it. I went with a family member last month to the Vanderbilt University ER, and those idiots made all of us wait outside on the sidewalk next to the ambulance ramp despite us all wearing chin slings, because, y’know, COVID, of the Omicron-Omigod-Moronic variety. So, they didn’t think these things work, either.
I’ve taken shots at Big Pediatrics and the legions of media, lay yappers, and even medical sheep who follow this political advocacy group and accept their stupid, and quite possibly harmful recommendations to vaccinate every child including those in the womb (if they can figure out how). I’m not a parent, but it’s evident that a great deal of unnecessary damage has been done to the current generation of children by the rest of us out of fear and false piety.
I have been tired of the mob panic since March of 2020, and say again that the medical profession badly failed everyone by not standing against the lunacy that only expanded the damage and did the virus’ job for it. If the physician profession does nothing wrong for the rest of the century, we should still hang our heads in shame for the harms to which we have been party these past two years.
And now, our latest contestants …
A group of physicians and researchers has formed to push their “Urgency of Normal” goals, which “include maintaining in-person learning regardless of COVID case counts; de-escalating fear around getting COVID; applying focused protection measures for individuals who remain at high risk; changing the focus to supporting kids’ mental, emotional, and social health; and making masks optional in schools.” Which is what our entire profession should have been doing by the summer of 2020 when it was apparent that kids were not harmed by COVID-19 to a degree that justified harming them. One of their number said clearly, “We believe the data point to restoring full normalcy for children… we really mean the full normal.” Amen.
Right on cue, an approved healer jumped in to scold the dangerous misinformationists. Mark Kline, MD, of Children’s Hospital New Orleans has had an impressive career, including developing and implementing programs for children with AIDS/HIV in multiple nations including our own. Kline has been in charge of major university pediatrics departments, and has been on the receiving end of $150 million in NIH and CDC grants, so he knows how to play politics. He is upset that the “Urgency of Normal” doctors have published an advocacy toolkit to advance their aims: “Proselytizing for a predetermined conclusion under the guise of objective, evidence-based analysis is not junk science, it’s just junk. With the health, well-being and lives of children at stake, we have every right to expect much more of our physicians.” There is no overwhelming evidence of a mass threat to children from this virus (particularly the latest head-cold variant), so who exactly is pushing a pre-determined conclusion? Kline whines about the toolkit “as something people can use to argue against school closures, the general use of masks in schools, and other mitigation measures.” Yes, exactly! “He added that he was especially disappointed to see that a number of pediatricians had signed on to the document.” I’m starting to smell the comfortably government-funded stink on this guy.
“It’s not an evidence-based discussion of the pros and cons,” Kline said. “It’s just simply, here is the conclusion we’ve come to, and here is the argument we would use in favor of this conclusion. And I think it’s flawed … start to finish.” You mean like the push for vaccinating healthy 5-year-olds who are at essentially zero risk?
“I think if we were to do as they are proposing, which is to basically do away with mitigation measures … that it’s bound to lead to more cases of COVID … more hospitalizations among children, and probably more deaths,” Kline said. So will the flu. The reflex to “children will die!!!” emotionalism shows that it’s time for this comfortable agent of the establishment to retire.
It’s sad, and destructive when political advocates masquerading as physicians start beating others over the head with their emotional truncheons. Enter “Lakshmi Ganapathi, MBBS, a pediatric infectious disease physician at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School” (I truly hate the influence of the Harvard numbskull factory on medicine, and have no idea what MBBS stands for). Demonstrating that she is truly out of ideas, Ganapathi plays the race card on the “Normal” docs: “They really silence the realities of communities of color.” Not satisfied with that unsubstantiated insult, she “further took issue with the group’s recommendations placing the burden of protection on the vulnerable. ‘We do need to act collectively. That’s a core public health principle.” Based on the past two years, a lot of us have come to learn that the core principle of public health is naked force, justified by bleating to a compliant media about dead children and underprivileged minority communities.
There is no evidence that mass masking of school children, surrounding their desks with ridiculous plexiglass barriers, or making them eat outside in the cold has accomplished anything positive, and has only blown billions of dollars and dragged out the evil laziness of teachers’ unions feigning worry over their own safety. The push to delay in-person learning is nakedly corrupt. Physicians should not give cover to these thieves. There is no reason to fear COVID infection in otherwise healthy children, much less to vaccinate them in the absence of long-term safety data. The risk:benefit ration simply does not justify mass pediatric COVID vaccination, something the latest billionaires at Pfizer certainly won’t mention.
Kline delivers a farewell gem on the “Normal” doctors’ recommendations: “They’re basically saying the mitigation measures that we’ve been using are unnecessary, so let’s get rid of them. But imagine where we’d be if we hadn’t used the mitigation measures that we have.” That stunningly unscientific statement tells us everything about the speaker, and his surrendered credibility.
Where would we be without pediatric mitigation measures? We’d be back to normal, with no increase in pediatric mortality / morbidity, tenured scolds like Kline and Ganapathi would be back to searching for new problem areas to use in shaking down others, and unionized teachers would be back in their lounges bitching about those damn kids.
FYI: An MBBS degree is a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery. The degree is an international medical school undergraduate dual degree that usually takes 6 years, so 2 years less than typical American pathway of Bachelors degree followed by a Doctorate of Medicine. Sometimes it is only a 4 or 4 1/2 year undergraduate degree that is followed by a 2 year MD program. It might not be viewed equivalent in every state, so one would need to check with the licensing board involved.
Pandemic policy was developed with no science, but sold to the public as science.
My understanding, which you will correct if flawed, is that one reason for vaccination is to protect those who come into contact with an infected, unvaccinated person. It accomplishes this purpose by making it more difficult for the virus to reach sufficient mass to replicate and reach a viral load that would make the infected person a possible vector.
Do you disagree with this? Do I have it wrong? If it’s right, isn’t this a reasonable argument for vaccinating kids–that is, not because the kids face a high risk of illness, but because many of the adults they’re around could be?
Any small studies thus far done indicated minimal infection rates, and even smaller transmission rates FROM children to adults. The evil teachers’ union claims to the contrary were without basis, so one must conclude they’re based on greed and/or laziness.
Moreover, this “vaccine” does not prevent infection, transmission, or mutation, so the objections are moot. We do not know whatever long-term effects may/may not occur, and so the potential risk to children may well be greater than the demonstrated non-risk to nervous adults.
MBBS — Master of Baffling Bull$&!^???