{"id":223465,"date":"2020-12-18T08:31:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-18T08:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=223465"},"modified":"2020-12-19T06:55:47","modified_gmt":"2020-12-19T06:55:47","slug":"how-many-times-are-the-facts-about-covid-going-to-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=223465","title":{"rendered":"How Many Times Are the \u201cFacts\u201d About COVID Going to Change?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>by Joanna Miller \u2013 The Organic Prepper Dec 16, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>I have never worked in the medical field. But, I have had many friends and family work in the medical field over the years. We could speak together, intelligently in the past. We could share information and ask one another questions.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s important for me to learn what I can do to better take care of myself and my children. While advice from individual practitioners varied somewhat, there was similar advice throughout the field, all around different parts of the country.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">Everything is different now, and there is far too much uncertainty<\/h2>\n<p>This year everything changed. Mainstream media says one thing; the people I know in medicine have various things to say. Some agree with everything on the news, while others disagree. In fact, one day they agree, the next day they don\u2019t.\u00a0 There has been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theorganicprepper.com\/can-we-trust-the-official-american-coronavirus-numbers\/\">doubt about the numbers<\/a> from the very beginning.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theorganicprepper.com\/survive-uncertainty\/\">Chaos reigns<\/a>. It\u2019s hard to make informed decisions because it\u2019s hard to know what\u2019s going on. Medicine has changed considerably over the last 20 years, likely contributing to the chaos and confusion.<\/p>\n<p>The health care system has become more bureaucratized over the decades for a variety of reasons. The Affordable Care Act dramatically sped up the process. It significantly increased overhead expenses, which encouraged many private doctors to work for larger groups, such as hospitals, to absorb those costs more quickly.<\/p>\n<p>Private ownership has been decreasing for years but markedly reduced during the years between <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ama-assn.org\/system\/files\/2019-07\/prp-fewer-owners-benchmark-survey-2018.pdf\">2012 and 2018<\/a>. \u00a0Physicians began moving away from offering their services privately to providing services at larger institutions. Hospitals and larger groups of physicians can more easily shoulder the burden of high overhead costs.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">The voice of humankind no longer belongs to us<\/h2>\n<p>I have worked in a variety of settings. When I worked for a privately owned burger joint in high school, I dyed my hair orange and purple and had five earrings. The customers did not care. My boss\u2019s opinion was all that concerned me. His only concern was whether it affected revenue. It didn\u2019t. My boss was cool with my being a strange-looking teen.<\/p>\n<p>After college, I worked for a large consulting firm. My hair was back to its natural color, and most of the piercings were gone. My more heavily tattooed coworkers had to dress very modestly. We represented a business with dozens of offices around the country and were expected to conduct ourselves in a certain way.<\/p>\n<p>Rules on what is acceptable in places of employment vary. In larger organizations, these rules tend to be much stricter. In today\u2019s environment, these rules do not only apply to appearance. Especially in larger institutions and corporations.<\/p>\n<p>In medicine, the move away from independent practices toward larger institutions made it difficult for physicians to voice their stance if it differs from the institutions that now employ them, which leads to a lack of information.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">I am not arguing about the existence of COVID<\/h2>\n<p>I am trying to point out how difficult it is to glean information\u00a0<em><strong>not<\/strong><\/em><strong>\u00a0<\/strong>influenced by hospital policies and non-disclosure agreements of medical professionals. When dealing with a dangerous new virus, information needs to be gathered from as many settings as possible.<\/p>\n<p>Compounding the issue is the fact that many medical professionals are truly exhausted. But is that solely the result of a new disease? Last September, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/hospitals-for-years-banked-on-lean-staffing-the-pandemic-overwhelmed-them-11600351907?page=1\">Wall Street Journal<\/a> ran an article detailing how hospitals have trimmed staff in recent years for budgetary reasons.<\/p>\n<p>Is this exhaustion on the part of health care workers solely an indicator of how bad the virus is? Or were health care workers stretched too thin before COVID hit?<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">With fewer workers available, was COVID the straw that broke the camel\u2019s back?<\/h2>\n<p>When we watch commercials with exhausted nurses telling everyone to stay home and mask up, is it such a stretch to wonder if perhaps some of this is due to poor management and lack of workers? Not solely due to the virus. Selco wrote previously that it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theorganicprepper.com\/selco-virus-system\/\">wasn\u2019t the virus we need to worry about, but the system<\/a>. Is that what we\u2019re seeing?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Fact:<\/strong>\u00a0Diseases emerge. Despite the chaos and uncertainty of the past year, progress has been made. I don\u2019t know why we\u2019re not giving more attention to progress and celebrating it.<\/p>\n<p>I have been watching the confirmed cases vs. deceased ratio daily for my county since they first began reporting it. In the spring, it was between 2 and 3 percent. In the past few months, it has hovered just above 1%.<\/p>\n<p>The ability to treat people suffering from Covid has significantly improved. The frontline health care workers who have been observing and refining different practices for the best possible outcomes deserve more credit than they have been getting.<\/p>\n<p>Rather than praising\u00a0<em>potential<\/em>\u00a0vaccines, why not praise the tangible progress already made?<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">What happened to letting nature do its job?<\/h2>\n<p>The development of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theorganicprepper.com\/superbugs-antibiotic-resistance\/\">antibiotic-resistant bacteria<\/a> is a genuine problem. People have denied this for years, though it\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mayoclinic.org\/healthy-lifestyle\/consumer-health\/in-depth\/antibiotics\/art-20045720\">well documented.<\/a> We share our bodies with trillions upon trillions of little microbes. In addition to the masking and stay-at-home orders, we are told to sanitize regularly. We don\u2019t live in a surgical ward. Trying to kill everything we can\u2019t immediately identify will lead us nowhere good. Nature doesn\u2019t work that way. Our bodies don\u2019t work that way.<\/p>\n<p>When I was in the corporate world, many of my friends had children in daycare. My relatives also put their infants in daycare. When their babies got sick, doctors invariably told them it was good to expose babies to pathogens. It would strengthen their immune systems in the long run. It seems like, until Covid, moderate exposure to a variety of pathogens was essential in developing an immune system.<\/p>\n<p>The authors of the <a href=\"https:\/\/gbdeclaration.org\/\">Great Barrington Declaration <\/a>do an exceptional job explaining the development of herd immunity among less-vulnerable members of the population. I strongly encourage everyone to read it and then read the authors\u2019 short biographies and co-signers. Accomplished scientists from all over the world have signed it.<\/p>\n<p>This declaration is no conspiracy of pseudo-intellectuals, <a href=\"https:\/\/thenewamerican.com\/big-tech-censors-declaration-from-epidemiologists-calling-for-end-to-lockdowns\/\">yet it was initially buried<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">Doesn\u2019t it seem like the \u201cfacts\u201d change too much and too often?<\/h2>\n<p>In the spring and summer, Florida\u2019s horrible spike in cases was all over the news. Stories of hospitals at 100% capacity spread rapidly. Nurses were offered large sums of money to go down and work there because the hospitals were overrun. My family has a physician friend in the Orlando area, and my parents asked her about it. She told my parents it was nonsense; she said the hospitals were closer to 10%, not 100%, and surmised lawsuits might be coming over the fraud.<\/p>\n<p>This physician takes Covid very seriously; she refuses to eat at any restaurant and only socializes outdoors while wearing a mask.<\/p>\n<p>Why would she say something like that?<\/p>\n<p>I spent some time researching and found an article titled\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thebl.com\/politics\/florida-hospital-admits-overstating-its-ccp-virus-positivity-rate-by-10-times-some-labs-have-not-reported-negative-results.html\">\u201c<em>Florida hospital admits overstating its CCP Virus positivity rate by 10 times, some labs have not reported negative results\u201d<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I have to wonder if the same sort of thing is happening worldwide.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">Progress is made when minds are allowed to bounce off each other<\/h2>\n<p>Communication and debate are essential. It is a lucky person who has never had conflicting diagnoses from doctors. I have been prescribed antibiotics for what turned out to be Bell\u2019s Palsy, which is viral and not treatable anyway. Physicians are smart, not perfect. People work best when they are allowed to communicate freely.<\/p>\n<p>This past year I have felt I was continually asked to suspend disbelief. Don\u2019t believe any physicians I know personally. Only agree with who the media titans believe in. Following <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theorganicprepper.com\/second-lockdown-start\/\">the strictest mandates<\/a> will protect my health. (Even though closing gyms and forcing people to stay indoors is a sure path to obesity, Vitamin D deficiency, and depression.) Taking <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theorganicprepper.com\/covid-vaccine\/\">an entirely new kind of vaccine<\/a> developed in less than a year (the typical time for vaccine development is between 5 and 10 years) is safer than getting exposed to a disease with a 99.98% survival rate.<\/p>\n<p>Really?\u00a0\u00a0<em>Really?<\/em><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">Covid is a new disease, and new things are scary<\/h2>\n<p>We confront and conquer frightening things, not by living in a constant state of fear, but by recognizing what we can and can\u2019t control and doing our little part.\u00a0For most of us, that means following the same advice doctors have been offering for years to stay healthy: exercise, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theorganicprepper.com\/sunshine-a-free-source-of-health-and-happiness\/\">get some sunshine<\/a>, eat the most nutritional food we can afford to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theorganicprepper.com\/boosting-your-immune-system-6-things-you-need-to-be-eating\/\">keep our immune systems strong<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Let the medical researchers hash things out at the top as far as specific treatments for Covid are concerned, but allow them to do that freely, without fear of reprisal because they might express the \u201cwrong\u201d opinions.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, as we learn more, some things will change. But it seems like the \u201crules\u201d have changed every other day since the beginning of the outbreak.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">This country no longer has the right to call itself the \u201cLand of the Free\u201d<\/h2>\n<p>How are we to build a clear and trusting relationship with our family doctors if we are told to listen to only one group of experts? Am I supposed to ignore other groups of experts? And who appointed these \u201cexperts\u201d we are being told to listen to?<\/p>\n<p>The United States is no longer a country where reasonably well-informed citizens can make their own decisions regarding health care. We are being forced to distrust our judgment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGuard your heart\u201d is advice I\u2019ve heard a lot over the years, but better advice for today would be \u201cGuard your mind.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theorganicprepper.com\/facts-covid\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One report claimed that Florida hospitals had overstated the virus positivity rate by ten times. You have to wonder if the same sort of thing isn\u2019t happening worldwide?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-coronavirus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=223465"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223495,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223465\/revisions\/223495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=223465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=223465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=223465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}