Thank you, I really appreciate your essay. I share the same mixture of pride and sadness. I wish it wasn’t so hard for our profession and associated public health agencies to practice being innovative, competent & confident while still prioritizing being humble & honest….we are made up of humans battling our egos, so it will always be a challenge, but we have to try.
I will not forget, “stay home until you can’t breathe.” This has never before been a reasonable approach. Early treatment saves lives. Steroids and bronchodilators were forbidden. Even “right to try” requests were refused. We know now that those agents are effective, even late in the course (references at your request). The DOD threatened to defund studies if an IVM arm was included. It was the deeply flawed studies of the “dangers of IVM” that was the start of my painful awakening.
I will not forget the forced use of Remdesivir (don’t believe me? Talk to docs who tried to adjust the protocol because of concern over borderline renal function). We knew from 2017 that it increased mortality, and soon that it was of very limited benefit in Covid.
I will never forget the denial of natural immunity, forcing many to take unnecessary risk from the shots.
I will not forget the (unforgivable) stories of forced intubation and ventilation, even once the 97% mortality was known. It is understandable that staff protection was crucial, but once enough staff had developed natural immunity, they could have staffed a step down unit and used positive airway pressure support to achieve oxygenation.
I will not forget that the CFR was falsely reported.
I will not forget that the number of “Covid deaths” was grossly exaggerated, due to payments for a Covid diagnosis. A relative killed in a MCA was one of those “Covid deaths.”
Not claiming that every hospital participated in the fraud, but $$$$ for every Covid death, every use of ventilators, and every use of
Remdesivir undoubtedly adversely affected patient care. Our data were forever compromised.
I will never forget that after the shot rollout, autopsies were all but forbidden. VAERS reports too. I will never forgive that the gaslighting of shot injuries continues. Who else remembers when thrombectomy was not a treatment for an ischemic stroke?
“Thrombectomy patients generally had better outcomes: Trial of Thrombectomy for Stroke with a Large Infarct of Unrestricted Size”
In my experience, the Paxlovid rebound is under reported and the claimed decrease in Long-Covid incidence is not there according to studies. And the government still spent over $10,000,000,000 on it. Have to show something is being done, throw money at everything. Gosh we have so much to learn!
WADR to, and appreciation for Dr. Smith’s experiences, it’s extremely difficult to look at our response to Covid in anything but a negative light. I acknowledge that the situation in NYC was indeed dire, so apologize in advance for my responses elsewhere in this thread.
Fred, I think think your responses really illustrate how badly our institutions did at conveying uncertainties and how badly they lost our trust. Science is evolving always but so many things were presented as certainty that ultimately were wrong. Now they want to change course about it but it’s so hard to know. How can we trust any of it now?
Just as NYC was in a terrible situation at in early March 2020 - many other areas really didn’t have issues. Again, it was a big mistake to treat the whole country the same and pass down mandates. It would have been so much better to do something along the lines of Taiwan - give information, what we know and don’t know, what might help or might not, and let people decide what risks they were willing to take and how to behave.
WADR, corporate medicine has shown no interest in “changing course.” No Cal Kaiser did this study, yet continues to harangue its members to take both, and at the same time.
“A team of U.S. federal government researchers is warning of a massively elevated risk of stroke among people who have received vaccines for the flu and Covid within close proximity.”
I wrote a lengthy reply to you, addressing where mistakes were NOT made, but accidentally erased. I won’t bother to repeat, but trust in medicine may (should?) never recover. I grieve the loss of our profession.
One thing I really like about your article is about your colleague who wore full PPE because he almost died and the ignorant comment that was made about it. We can never know everyone else’s stories, so it’s smart to be cautious about judgmental comments like that. I can be a little judgmental about people wearing PPE alone in their cars, but who knows…maybe they’re truly afraid, and if so, they need compassion.
Yeah, that experience really drove home for me how important it is to give each other grace and have some humility. What ever your choice is, you can at least acknowledge that others might have different reasons and circumstances and emotions than you.
the question for me , were you part of the doctors who believed in the early treatment of Covid , experimenting with repurposed drugs , learning from other doctors who were having success or part of the medical - big pharma establishment making war on early treatment protocols and fostering panic to promote the experimental gene therapy to exclusion of every thing else. Were you part of the campaign that denied me the right to FDA approved drugs - repurposed drugs that I wanted after a discussion with my doctor. Did prescribe Remdesevier . There were doctors who treated and had success with thousands of patients and they were pursecuted for this , had their licences revoked , did you remain silent , did you believe the lies about the vaccines , how do you explain the rise in all cause mortality and cancers for years after covid , ........
What a brave essay. Thank you for bringing it all back.
In the NICU, we saw essentially no disease in babies born to infected mothers (although isolating/cohorting the at-risk babies was very challenging.) Going to deliveries of babies of infected mothers was fraught with peril, especially when the call to attend was stat. (Do you take the time to put on PPE when an unexpectedly born baby needs resuscitation? Yes.) We also saw a significant number of mothers go onto ECMO.
The front line staff didn’t feel like heroes, either. They felt scared and exhausted.
A thoughtful and thankful article on a very difficult time. As I read it in this near retirement time from rural family practice and ED work I can't help but see COVID in that short time as a metaphor for what WE have done in this Era of the health care BUSINESS. As COVID was to those few years, Business models are to a lifetime of dedicated medical service. I am thankful and saddened.
Will never forget 8/1985 making rounds at Houston VA with Dr Musher, Inf Dis, when little was known about AIDS. We were all even placing gloves over our stethoscope bells while he walked through the ward and interacted with the pts without hesitation. Experience is not as valued now.
A dramatic documentary by Dr Smith. Kudo's to her.
Here's something I'll never understand about the vaccine and the FDA. Phase 3 testing was started in July 2020. At that time we knew that 40-45% of the Covid deaths were in nursing home patients, even though they represented less than 1% of the population. As for the rest the overwhelming majority of deaths were in older patients and/or those with metabolic problems like diabetes and obesity or other significant chronic medical problems. The death rate in those under age 60 in good general health without underlying morbidities was known to be 0.1% and more likely a lot lower given that it was not at all clear who really was infected. Even in individuals from minority groups, who were said to be more at risk, the same statistics applied. And yet well over half of the volunteers in the phase 3 trials were younger and healthy. In the Pfizer study 58% of the volunteers were under age 55 and almost 80% had no underlying metabolic or other chronic medical problems.
The FDA did not release the vaccines until December 2020, after which their effectiveness for the original virus in those at high risk was demonstrated by death rates in nursing homes dropping dramatically by 90%. In light of the nature of the crisis and the clear understanding in July of who was at risk, why was there not an all-out effort to recruit phase 3 volunteers focused on high-risk groups, as many as wanted to participate. How many individuals such as described by Dr. Smith could have been spared their fate by receiving vaccines months earlier.
Sad to say too much politics was involved in the whole process. Operation Warp Speed expedited the vaccine production. Democrats were skeptical and suspected pressure on the FDA by the President. As soon as the parties changed hands after the election the sides were reversed. Hopefully such factors didn't play a large role, but it seems to me that the public health authorities nevertheless badly missed the boat.
One manifestation of health care distrust is vaccine refusal/hesitancy. In the interest of public health, physicians should work to over it. One way would be to sell vaccine refusers on the benefits of vaccine compliance. The public shows a growing interest in dementia prevention. This study links that interest and vaccine compliance. https://scitechdaily.com/stronger-flu-shot-linked-to-nearly-55-lower-alzheimers-risk-study-finds/
The AAP still recommends the Covid shots for heathy young children who are at near zero risk of the disease. They also pushed hard for the shots even after we knew from Pfizer’s own documents (FOIA, dated 2/28/2021) that the exact syndrome (MIS-C) could be caused by the shots themselves. They have not sounded the alarm over our rising cancer, autism and chronic disease rates, or our infant mortality rates, the highest of 26 other developed nations. Zero credibility.
WADR, this study cannot be extrapolated to this conclusion. Six years ago, I would have agreed with you on the vaccine issue. Thanks to the Covid debacle, that ship has sailed. The harms from the Covid shots are many, and can be easily found if you’re interested.
As for the others, read one, just one, vaxxed vs unvaxxed study. Retracted, but not wrong.
In 1979, Wyeth (now Pfizer) deliberately chose to spread out lots of vaccines to hide the cluster of SIDS deaths in TN. They did the same during Covid; vax injured relatives got shots from the same “hot lot” over 200 miles apart. Actual document available at your request.
The ICD code for deaths due to “prophylactic immunization” was deleted in 1979. Before the 1960s, “crib death” was so rare that it wasn’t even included in infant mortality statistics. After the national immunization campaigns of the 1960s, the term SIDS was coined and in 1973, became an internationally coded diagnosis (ICD). Removed 6 years later.
Why are all newborns are given HepB shots even when most are at near zero risk of the disease, and safety signals for seizures, autism and SIDS are, or were, on the package insert. Not claiming cause and effect, but package insert is the only place drug companies are required to tell the truth to preserve immunity from persecution, and the safety signals are real.
Why are studies withdrawn instead of analyzed?
“Increased Mortality Associated with 2-Month Old Infant Vaccinations
Among other results, they found that: Children receiving all 5 first-time recommended vaccines for 2-month olds (DTaP, rotavirus, HIB, polio, and pneumococcal) were compared to children who did not receive any of the 5 vaccines in their second month of life. Children who received all five vaccines were 60% (OR=1.60 (1.12-2.32), p-value=0.0084) more likely to die in their 3rd month compared to the unvaccinated.
I have more, if you’re interested. Vaccine hesitancy is here to stay, and rightly so.
Re Hep B: A 2010 study found that boys vaccinated as neonates had 3x higher odds for autism diagnosis compared to boys never vaccinated or vaccinated after the first month of life. Non-white boys bore a greater risk..
Yet in 2017, the AAP, not satisfied with 85% of newborns being vaccinated prior to discharge, issued guidance that HepB vaccine be administered to well newborns with birth weight ≥2000 grams (that’s a 4.4 lb preemie) within 24 hours after birth. They succeeded in increasing the vax rate, but did not appear to do any follow-up to assess the development of autism.
Yeah, that's NOT happening. And I thank God for it. PreCovid I trusted the CDC, FDA, JAMA, AMA, and doctors. Now? I trust them as much as I trust CNN. Which is not zero percent, but it's asymptotically approaching zero.
Same here. I was a believer and strong supporter. Now I regard those as self-centered elitist bureaucracies with little redeeming value. They are a detriment to medical research and improvement.
I cannot believe these days how much people have forgotten what so many, including you, went through at that time. Or how little we knew. How it felt to wonder if we were, all of us, going to be dead in a year's time. So little was known, and covid was so random, even if you got it, it was a lottery ticket with unknown odds.
Thank you for saying all this. It is horribly sad.
Is there a difference between dying with and from ??? Which one pays more ???
And the ones bought out PPE and disinfectant wipes to then gouge the citizens ?
One thing I hope we never have to experience is dying alone, by mandate ….
Lots of lessons to be learned. Like I tell friends, we should all be like 3 yr old kids again and always ask “ but why ? “ If you can’t explain it simply or back it up, well, what is it ?
There's an answer. When CDC/FDA (can't remember which) instituted the "if you suspect covid death, we'll pay you the $2000 ($2500?) per patient from the government" went into effect, the "COVID DEATH reporting sky rocketed. Imagine that. You can almost set your watch to the jump.
DoxGPT says the payment was to compensate for the extra cost of caring for more and sicker pts, specially since other non emergency medical procedures and services use went down by 47% that year. The hospitals went from a -1% to a -7.4% operating margin if I remember correctly what the article said. I had to have my trigger finger release done at orthopedic office under local and with one Xanax as preop since I wasn’t an emergency plus dealt with pts at the clinic every day.
I read some first responder articles about Katrina, and in some ways, it was even worse than Covid. With Covid, at least hospitals were functioning. Of course, not negating that the infectious concern, but my hat’s off to you who soldiered through that disaster.
The eye went over us, Picayune, MS. 12 days without power. Ate great trying not to lose the freezer supplies ! Hosted 4 families and their pets at our place. A bad camping experience. Hoping not to relive it !
If you died from a car accident and happened to have COVID - sure, there’s a difference. But if the fact that you had COVID made it significantly more difficult to treat you after the car accident- where do you draw the line? I have no idea what paid more. To my knowledge doctors treated the patient in front of them, if the patient had COVID and had to be in the hospital, that diagnosis was relavent. At minimum having a COVID diagnosis meant increased precautions against infection, but often also increased monitoring needs. Should there not be a cost involved in that extra work and resource use?
There was certainly too much mandate and not enough informed consent. At the beginning there was so much we didn’t know - but we should have allowed people to make decisions with that uncertainty rather than pretending we knew what was best for everyone.
But I thought with universal precautions then the difference in cost was not as stark.
I had my pOx to 72% before I agreed to go to the hospital 9/2020. One of the lucky ones to have gone home on 02 and fully recovered. But I was forced to vaccinate after or not work. Is that battery ? The second dose took me out of work for two days with high fevers and general malaise, but back then that absence was not counted. Who knows, what’s done is done. And dissent should not be curtailed.
IMHO, forced shots after infection were battery (but sadly, you’d have to prove harm). We’ve known for decades that natural immunity is superior to vaccine immunity. Denial of that fact is one of the many lies that I cannot forget.
Thank you for sharing. I worked at a hospital in a “back office”role during the pandemic. I had the option to work from home even though I had my own office. I chose not to in solidarity with the medical staff who were there fighting the good fight every day.
I too feel a sense of pride at the response of my colleagues and yes my Health Care System in dealing with Covid. Mistakes: yes: successes absolutely. Lessons learned: sure hope so.
Covid created a generation of doctors that saw a lot of Covid and not much else in the disease process. I hope they were resilient and seek the information they don’t know.
Agree that trust-rebuilding is key. Mustn't that include being specific about the lies she (and the test of us) were told? And those she herself unwittingly transmitted. Didn't it turn out that treating Covid-ARDs w/ pressure support was deadly. Didn't those patients need high concentrations of O2, instead, not a vent? If so, was 't puzzling about vent-rationing desultory, albeit forgivable error?
I think it is still pretty complicated who benefited from intubation versus high flow oxygen versus ECMO in people with severe Covid pneumonia. These were the sickest people who had the highest mortality. We learned the proper approach pretty fast. Did we know how to treat a novel disease perfectly in the first couple of months? Shockingly, no.
PEEP could have been utilized in many, but hospitals weren’t given bonuses for adequate oxygenation. RT’s were forbidden from using non invasive measures. Not ignoring the infectious concerns, but once adequate PPE was available, and the horrific mortality rate of the ventilated was known, early intubation was still encouraged and even forced.
Try this: “ My own children were afraid of me, trained not to go near me after I came home from work. This lasted for years. My teenager has only just begun to let me hug her again.”
If Dr Prasad were here he’d have an aneurysm reading that. We are never going to get to trust and forgiveness again with that sort of madness.
Maybe I'm not completely understanding your comment, but in the first few month in NYC there were many many deaths, I was exposed to COVID all the time, and we had no idea how bad it would be, how contagious, or how much asymptomatic transmission was happening. I was terrified that I would bring it home to my husband and children. I had several colleagues die or nearly die or whose family members died. It would have been crazy for me not to be worried that I could transmit this to my family. What would have happened to my children if my husband or I had died? How could I have ever forgiven myself if one of my children had died?
So yeah, I (and many others) entered the home through a different door, showered and wiped down surfaces, and tried to disinfect myself after coming home from work. I had a 3 year old and a 3rd grader, both of whom where used to greeting me at the door before COVID. Before COVID, there would be rare occasions when I would stop them because I might have blood or bodily fluids on me.
Once we had a better idea of how things were going, of course I stopped being so anal about post-shift sanitizing. To clarify: I did not continue the practice for years, rather the memory and the worry has stuck with my children for years and that is sad. On the other hand I don't regret being careful at first - it would have been madness for me not to be careful - because we did not know.
Doc, I'm truly sorry for the pain your family went through!
I have more children, and younger children, than you do, and I see more sick children every day than you do. I, too, wash my hands and change my clothes before playing with my kids, though this has nothing to do with Covid - I don't want to give them RSV, or the flu, or any of the other common childhood illnesses that are far more dangerous than Covid.
It seems like within a few months you realized how little danger Covid poses to children and healthy young adults - perhaps from reading Sensible Medicine! As such, given your beautiful and thoughtful writing skills and your influential position, I trust you can point us all to the impassioned advocacy work you did in those early years about any of the following issues:
- calling for an end to lockdowns and school closures
- calling for an end to masking of children
- fighting against vaccine mandates for your fellow doctors
- fighting against vaccine mandates for school children
- fighting against vaccine mandates for college students
- denouncing vaccine cards for entry to new york restaurants and other establishments
- denouncing the closure of churches and gyms while liquor stores and casinos were kept open
- denouncing the unbearably lonely and miserable deaths of patients whose family members were not allowed to be near them
- calling attention to how crazy it was to ban all ordinary people from having funerals or weddings while at the same time encouraging mass demonstrations and countless memorials for George Floyd
- speaking out forcefully against the unbelievable, truly evil censorship of many of your fellow doctors by the public health authorities and the government and the use of false accusations of 'misinformation' to ban people from public discourse
- speaking out against the key role leading public health officials played in the funding and development of the Covid virus
- denouncing the attempts to censor people for accurately pointing out the true origins of Covid
If you did indeed use your position as an esteemed member of New York's medical community to advocate for the above, I apologize for my comments. Please share the links with us to your many essays and speeches and activism around these topics.
If, on the other hand, my cursory substack search seems to be accurate and you said absolutely nothing about any of these topics when it mattered, but did write an essay just last year denouncing medical censorship ... by RFK Jr., well, then the whole world sees you for exactly what you are.
Dostoevsky would say you are possessed by ideology. Solzhenitsyn would have some choice words as well. You see, it's not enough to simply read Russian literature, it helps to understand it, too.
But, considering that you do not hesitate in your substack posts to mock Christianity and advocate for 'trans' rights, abortion rights, and other fashionable beliefs in your insulated New York medical circles, it is no wonder to me that you kept fashionably silent rather than speak out to defend the lives and souls of children when it truly mattered.
Coming back 6 years later to say 'mistakes were made' is not going to cut it.
But I have great news for you! The best news ever, in fact! All that guilt, sadness, trauma, and cognitive dissonance you are feeling can go away. The truth can set you free. Put aside your desire to fit in the inner circle, put aside your pride, acknowledge your sins, pray for redemption - and it will be granted you! It is never too late! God truly loves you, he died to save you, you do not have to do this on your own. May you and your family find healing and everlasting peace.
Thank you, I really appreciate your essay. I share the same mixture of pride and sadness. I wish it wasn’t so hard for our profession and associated public health agencies to practice being innovative, competent & confident while still prioritizing being humble & honest….we are made up of humans battling our egos, so it will always be a challenge, but we have to try.
I will not forget, “stay home until you can’t breathe.” This has never before been a reasonable approach. Early treatment saves lives. Steroids and bronchodilators were forbidden. Even “right to try” requests were refused. We know now that those agents are effective, even late in the course (references at your request). The DOD threatened to defund studies if an IVM arm was included. It was the deeply flawed studies of the “dangers of IVM” that was the start of my painful awakening.
I will not forget the forced use of Remdesivir (don’t believe me? Talk to docs who tried to adjust the protocol because of concern over borderline renal function). We knew from 2017 that it increased mortality, and soon that it was of very limited benefit in Covid.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1910993
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32941437/
I will never forget the denial of natural immunity, forcing many to take unnecessary risk from the shots.
I will not forget the (unforgivable) stories of forced intubation and ventilation, even once the 97% mortality was known. It is understandable that staff protection was crucial, but once enough staff had developed natural immunity, they could have staffed a step down unit and used positive airway pressure support to achieve oxygenation.
I will not forget that the CFR was falsely reported.
I will not forget that the number of “Covid deaths” was grossly exaggerated, due to payments for a Covid diagnosis. A relative killed in a MCA was one of those “Covid deaths.”
Not claiming that every hospital participated in the fraud, but $$$$ for every Covid death, every use of ventilators, and every use of
Remdesivir undoubtedly adversely affected patient care. Our data were forever compromised.
I will never forget that after the shot rollout, autopsies were all but forbidden. VAERS reports too. I will never forgive that the gaslighting of shot injuries continues. Who else remembers when thrombectomy was not a treatment for an ischemic stroke?
“Thrombectomy patients generally had better outcomes: Trial of Thrombectomy for Stroke with a Large Infarct of Unrestricted Size”
N Engl J Med 2024;390:1677-1689
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2314063
VOL. 390 NO. 18
In my experience, the Paxlovid rebound is under reported and the claimed decrease in Long-Covid incidence is not there according to studies. And the government still spent over $10,000,000,000 on it. Have to show something is being done, throw money at everything. Gosh we have so much to learn!
WADR to, and appreciation for Dr. Smith’s experiences, it’s extremely difficult to look at our response to Covid in anything but a negative light. I acknowledge that the situation in NYC was indeed dire, so apologize in advance for my responses elsewhere in this thread.
Fred, I think think your responses really illustrate how badly our institutions did at conveying uncertainties and how badly they lost our trust. Science is evolving always but so many things were presented as certainty that ultimately were wrong. Now they want to change course about it but it’s so hard to know. How can we trust any of it now?
Just as NYC was in a terrible situation at in early March 2020 - many other areas really didn’t have issues. Again, it was a big mistake to treat the whole country the same and pass down mandates. It would have been so much better to do something along the lines of Taiwan - give information, what we know and don’t know, what might help or might not, and let people decide what risks they were willing to take and how to behave.
WADR, corporate medicine has shown no interest in “changing course.” No Cal Kaiser did this study, yet continues to harangue its members to take both, and at the same time.
“A team of U.S. federal government researchers is warning of a massively elevated risk of stroke among people who have received vaccines for the flu and Covid within close proximity.”
https://prd-tsn-main-api.s3.amazonaws.com/article/8e27368f-c320-4d8a-91af-851c9b701d06.pdf
I wrote a lengthy reply to you, addressing where mistakes were NOT made, but accidentally erased. I won’t bother to repeat, but trust in medicine may (should?) never recover. I grieve the loss of our profession.
One thing I really like about your article is about your colleague who wore full PPE because he almost died and the ignorant comment that was made about it. We can never know everyone else’s stories, so it’s smart to be cautious about judgmental comments like that. I can be a little judgmental about people wearing PPE alone in their cars, but who knows…maybe they’re truly afraid, and if so, they need compassion.
Yeah, that experience really drove home for me how important it is to give each other grace and have some humility. What ever your choice is, you can at least acknowledge that others might have different reasons and circumstances and emotions than you.
the question for me , were you part of the doctors who believed in the early treatment of Covid , experimenting with repurposed drugs , learning from other doctors who were having success or part of the medical - big pharma establishment making war on early treatment protocols and fostering panic to promote the experimental gene therapy to exclusion of every thing else. Were you part of the campaign that denied me the right to FDA approved drugs - repurposed drugs that I wanted after a discussion with my doctor. Did prescribe Remdesevier . There were doctors who treated and had success with thousands of patients and they were pursecuted for this , had their licences revoked , did you remain silent , did you believe the lies about the vaccines , how do you explain the rise in all cause mortality and cancers for years after covid , ........
What a brave essay. Thank you for bringing it all back.
In the NICU, we saw essentially no disease in babies born to infected mothers (although isolating/cohorting the at-risk babies was very challenging.) Going to deliveries of babies of infected mothers was fraught with peril, especially when the call to attend was stat. (Do you take the time to put on PPE when an unexpectedly born baby needs resuscitation? Yes.) We also saw a significant number of mothers go onto ECMO.
The front line staff didn’t feel like heroes, either. They felt scared and exhausted.
A thoughtful and thankful article on a very difficult time. As I read it in this near retirement time from rural family practice and ED work I can't help but see COVID in that short time as a metaphor for what WE have done in this Era of the health care BUSINESS. As COVID was to those few years, Business models are to a lifetime of dedicated medical service. I am thankful and saddened.
"My teenager has only just begun to let me hug her again" That's the saddest thing I've read in a long time.
Will never forget 8/1985 making rounds at Houston VA with Dr Musher, Inf Dis, when little was known about AIDS. We were all even placing gloves over our stethoscope bells while he walked through the ward and interacted with the pts without hesitation. Experience is not as valued now.
I agree.
A dramatic documentary by Dr Smith. Kudo's to her.
Here's something I'll never understand about the vaccine and the FDA. Phase 3 testing was started in July 2020. At that time we knew that 40-45% of the Covid deaths were in nursing home patients, even though they represented less than 1% of the population. As for the rest the overwhelming majority of deaths were in older patients and/or those with metabolic problems like diabetes and obesity or other significant chronic medical problems. The death rate in those under age 60 in good general health without underlying morbidities was known to be 0.1% and more likely a lot lower given that it was not at all clear who really was infected. Even in individuals from minority groups, who were said to be more at risk, the same statistics applied. And yet well over half of the volunteers in the phase 3 trials were younger and healthy. In the Pfizer study 58% of the volunteers were under age 55 and almost 80% had no underlying metabolic or other chronic medical problems.
The FDA did not release the vaccines until December 2020, after which their effectiveness for the original virus in those at high risk was demonstrated by death rates in nursing homes dropping dramatically by 90%. In light of the nature of the crisis and the clear understanding in July of who was at risk, why was there not an all-out effort to recruit phase 3 volunteers focused on high-risk groups, as many as wanted to participate. How many individuals such as described by Dr. Smith could have been spared their fate by receiving vaccines months earlier.
Sad to say too much politics was involved in the whole process. Operation Warp Speed expedited the vaccine production. Democrats were skeptical and suspected pressure on the FDA by the President. As soon as the parties changed hands after the election the sides were reversed. Hopefully such factors didn't play a large role, but it seems to me that the public health authorities nevertheless badly missed the boat.
One manifestation of health care distrust is vaccine refusal/hesitancy. In the interest of public health, physicians should work to over it. One way would be to sell vaccine refusers on the benefits of vaccine compliance. The public shows a growing interest in dementia prevention. This study links that interest and vaccine compliance. https://scitechdaily.com/stronger-flu-shot-linked-to-nearly-55-lower-alzheimers-risk-study-finds/
The AAP still recommends the Covid shots for heathy young children who are at near zero risk of the disease. They also pushed hard for the shots even after we knew from Pfizer’s own documents (FOIA, dated 2/28/2021) that the exact syndrome (MIS-C) could be caused by the shots themselves. They have not sounded the alarm over our rising cancer, autism and chronic disease rates, or our infant mortality rates, the highest of 26 other developed nations. Zero credibility.
Why are vaxxed/unvaxxed studies not being done, and or suppressed?
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202512.1865?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
https://publichealthpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Mawson_Jacob_SciencePublicHealthPolicyAndTheLaw_v6.2019-2025.Jan_2025.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7709050/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7268563/
https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=136921
https://www.aninconvenientstudy.com/
https://publichealthpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Mawson_Jacob_SciencePublicHealthPolicyAndTheLaw_v6.2019-2025.Jan_2025.pdf
https://drwojakmd.substack.com/p/unvaccinated-children-are-healthier?r=8yuuy&utm_medium=ios
WADR, this study cannot be extrapolated to this conclusion. Six years ago, I would have agreed with you on the vaccine issue. Thanks to the Covid debacle, that ship has sailed. The harms from the Covid shots are many, and can be easily found if you’re interested.
As for the others, read one, just one, vaxxed vs unvaxxed study. Retracted, but not wrong.
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/22/8674
SIDS deaths fell when fewer vaccines were given during the lockdowns. There was a global outbreak of non-infectious liver failure in 2022 when kids were given their “catch up” doses. https://philipmcmillan.substack.com/p/the-unasked-question-behind-the-global?r=8yuuy&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
In 1979, Wyeth (now Pfizer) deliberately chose to spread out lots of vaccines to hide the cluster of SIDS deaths in TN. They did the same during Covid; vax injured relatives got shots from the same “hot lot” over 200 miles apart. Actual document available at your request.
The ICD code for deaths due to “prophylactic immunization” was deleted in 1979. Before the 1960s, “crib death” was so rare that it wasn’t even included in infant mortality statistics. After the national immunization campaigns of the 1960s, the term SIDS was coined and in 1973, became an internationally coded diagnosis (ICD). Removed 6 years later.
Why are all newborns are given HepB shots even when most are at near zero risk of the disease, and safety signals for seizures, autism and SIDS are, or were, on the package insert. Not claiming cause and effect, but package insert is the only place drug companies are required to tell the truth to preserve immunity from persecution, and the safety signals are real.
Why are studies withdrawn instead of analyzed?
“Increased Mortality Associated with 2-Month Old Infant Vaccinations
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202512.1865
Among other results, they found that: Children receiving all 5 first-time recommended vaccines for 2-month olds (DTaP, rotavirus, HIB, polio, and pneumococcal) were compared to children who did not receive any of the 5 vaccines in their second month of life. Children who received all five vaccines were 60% (OR=1.60 (1.12-2.32), p-value=0.0084) more likely to die in their 3rd month compared to the unvaccinated.
I have more, if you’re interested. Vaccine hesitancy is here to stay, and rightly so.
Re Hep B: A 2010 study found that boys vaccinated as neonates had 3x higher odds for autism diagnosis compared to boys never vaccinated or vaccinated after the first month of life. Non-white boys bore a greater risk..
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21058170/
Yet in 2017, the AAP, not satisfied with 85% of newborns being vaccinated prior to discharge, issued guidance that HepB vaccine be administered to well newborns with birth weight ≥2000 grams (that’s a 4.4 lb preemie) within 24 hours after birth. They succeeded in increasing the vax rate, but did not appear to do any follow-up to assess the development of autism.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9843611/
https://amidwesterndoctor.substack.com/p/why-is-every-newborn-forced-to-get-369?r=8yuuy&utm_medium=ios
Yeah, that's NOT happening. And I thank God for it. PreCovid I trusted the CDC, FDA, JAMA, AMA, and doctors. Now? I trust them as much as I trust CNN. Which is not zero percent, but it's asymptotically approaching zero.
Same here. I was a believer and strong supporter. Now I regard those as self-centered elitist bureaucracies with little redeeming value. They are a detriment to medical research and improvement.
I cannot believe these days how much people have forgotten what so many, including you, went through at that time. Or how little we knew. How it felt to wonder if we were, all of us, going to be dead in a year's time. So little was known, and covid was so random, even if you got it, it was a lottery ticket with unknown odds.
Thank you for saying all this. It is horribly sad.
So little was known? In the very beginning, absolutely. By the time the Great Barrington Declaration was mocked, we know a lot.
Is there a difference between dying with and from ??? Which one pays more ???
And the ones bought out PPE and disinfectant wipes to then gouge the citizens ?
One thing I hope we never have to experience is dying alone, by mandate ….
Lots of lessons to be learned. Like I tell friends, we should all be like 3 yr old kids again and always ask “ but why ? “ If you can’t explain it simply or back it up, well, what is it ?
There's an answer. When CDC/FDA (can't remember which) instituted the "if you suspect covid death, we'll pay you the $2000 ($2500?) per patient from the government" went into effect, the "COVID DEATH reporting sky rocketed. Imagine that. You can almost set your watch to the jump.
DoxGPT says the payment was to compensate for the extra cost of caring for more and sicker pts, specially since other non emergency medical procedures and services use went down by 47% that year. The hospitals went from a -1% to a -7.4% operating margin if I remember correctly what the article said. I had to have my trigger finger release done at orthopedic office under local and with one Xanax as preop since I wasn’t an emergency plus dealt with pts at the clinic every day.
There is much more to that “story” than DoxGPT will acknowledge.
Talk about M.A.S.H. ! Just like when Katrina destroyed our hospital and they set out tents on the parking lot to care for the pts.
I read some first responder articles about Katrina, and in some ways, it was even worse than Covid. With Covid, at least hospitals were functioning. Of course, not negating that the infectious concern, but my hat’s off to you who soldiered through that disaster.
The eye went over us, Picayune, MS. 12 days without power. Ate great trying not to lose the freezer supplies ! Hosted 4 families and their pets at our place. A bad camping experience. Hoping not to relive it !
If you died from a car accident and happened to have COVID - sure, there’s a difference. But if the fact that you had COVID made it significantly more difficult to treat you after the car accident- where do you draw the line? I have no idea what paid more. To my knowledge doctors treated the patient in front of them, if the patient had COVID and had to be in the hospital, that diagnosis was relavent. At minimum having a COVID diagnosis meant increased precautions against infection, but often also increased monitoring needs. Should there not be a cost involved in that extra work and resource use?
There was certainly too much mandate and not enough informed consent. At the beginning there was so much we didn’t know - but we should have allowed people to make decisions with that uncertainty rather than pretending we knew what was best for everyone.
Agree with above. We were assembly line workers.
But I thought with universal precautions then the difference in cost was not as stark.
I had my pOx to 72% before I agreed to go to the hospital 9/2020. One of the lucky ones to have gone home on 02 and fully recovered. But I was forced to vaccinate after or not work. Is that battery ? The second dose took me out of work for two days with high fevers and general malaise, but back then that absence was not counted. Who knows, what’s done is done. And dissent should not be curtailed.
IMHO, forced shots after infection were battery (but sadly, you’d have to prove harm). We’ve known for decades that natural immunity is superior to vaccine immunity. Denial of that fact is one of the many lies that I cannot forget.
Thank you for sharing. I worked at a hospital in a “back office”role during the pandemic. I had the option to work from home even though I had my own office. I chose not to in solidarity with the medical staff who were there fighting the good fight every day.
I too feel a sense of pride at the response of my colleagues and yes my Health Care System in dealing with Covid. Mistakes: yes: successes absolutely. Lessons learned: sure hope so.
Covid created a generation of doctors that saw a lot of Covid and not much else in the disease process. I hope they were resilient and seek the information they don’t know.
Agree that trust-rebuilding is key. Mustn't that include being specific about the lies she (and the test of us) were told? And those she herself unwittingly transmitted. Didn't it turn out that treating Covid-ARDs w/ pressure support was deadly. Didn't those patients need high concentrations of O2, instead, not a vent? If so, was 't puzzling about vent-rationing desultory, albeit forgivable error?
I think it is still pretty complicated who benefited from intubation versus high flow oxygen versus ECMO in people with severe Covid pneumonia. These were the sickest people who had the highest mortality. We learned the proper approach pretty fast. Did we know how to treat a novel disease perfectly in the first couple of months? Shockingly, no.
PEEP could have been utilized in many, but hospitals weren’t given bonuses for adequate oxygenation. RT’s were forbidden from using non invasive measures. Not ignoring the infectious concerns, but once adequate PPE was available, and the horrific mortality rate of the ventilated was known, early intubation was still encouraged and even forced.
The first couple months?
Try this: “ My own children were afraid of me, trained not to go near me after I came home from work. This lasted for years. My teenager has only just begun to let me hug her again.”
If Dr Prasad were here he’d have an aneurysm reading that. We are never going to get to trust and forgiveness again with that sort of madness.
Maybe I'm not completely understanding your comment, but in the first few month in NYC there were many many deaths, I was exposed to COVID all the time, and we had no idea how bad it would be, how contagious, or how much asymptomatic transmission was happening. I was terrified that I would bring it home to my husband and children. I had several colleagues die or nearly die or whose family members died. It would have been crazy for me not to be worried that I could transmit this to my family. What would have happened to my children if my husband or I had died? How could I have ever forgiven myself if one of my children had died?
So yeah, I (and many others) entered the home through a different door, showered and wiped down surfaces, and tried to disinfect myself after coming home from work. I had a 3 year old and a 3rd grader, both of whom where used to greeting me at the door before COVID. Before COVID, there would be rare occasions when I would stop them because I might have blood or bodily fluids on me.
Once we had a better idea of how things were going, of course I stopped being so anal about post-shift sanitizing. To clarify: I did not continue the practice for years, rather the memory and the worry has stuck with my children for years and that is sad. On the other hand I don't regret being careful at first - it would have been madness for me not to be careful - because we did not know.
Doc, I'm truly sorry for the pain your family went through!
I have more children, and younger children, than you do, and I see more sick children every day than you do. I, too, wash my hands and change my clothes before playing with my kids, though this has nothing to do with Covid - I don't want to give them RSV, or the flu, or any of the other common childhood illnesses that are far more dangerous than Covid.
It seems like within a few months you realized how little danger Covid poses to children and healthy young adults - perhaps from reading Sensible Medicine! As such, given your beautiful and thoughtful writing skills and your influential position, I trust you can point us all to the impassioned advocacy work you did in those early years about any of the following issues:
- calling for an end to lockdowns and school closures
- calling for an end to masking of children
- fighting against vaccine mandates for your fellow doctors
- fighting against vaccine mandates for school children
- fighting against vaccine mandates for college students
- denouncing vaccine cards for entry to new york restaurants and other establishments
- denouncing the closure of churches and gyms while liquor stores and casinos were kept open
- denouncing the unbearably lonely and miserable deaths of patients whose family members were not allowed to be near them
- calling attention to how crazy it was to ban all ordinary people from having funerals or weddings while at the same time encouraging mass demonstrations and countless memorials for George Floyd
- speaking out forcefully against the unbelievable, truly evil censorship of many of your fellow doctors by the public health authorities and the government and the use of false accusations of 'misinformation' to ban people from public discourse
- speaking out against the key role leading public health officials played in the funding and development of the Covid virus
- denouncing the attempts to censor people for accurately pointing out the true origins of Covid
If you did indeed use your position as an esteemed member of New York's medical community to advocate for the above, I apologize for my comments. Please share the links with us to your many essays and speeches and activism around these topics.
If, on the other hand, my cursory substack search seems to be accurate and you said absolutely nothing about any of these topics when it mattered, but did write an essay just last year denouncing medical censorship ... by RFK Jr., well, then the whole world sees you for exactly what you are.
Dostoevsky would say you are possessed by ideology. Solzhenitsyn would have some choice words as well. You see, it's not enough to simply read Russian literature, it helps to understand it, too.
But, considering that you do not hesitate in your substack posts to mock Christianity and advocate for 'trans' rights, abortion rights, and other fashionable beliefs in your insulated New York medical circles, it is no wonder to me that you kept fashionably silent rather than speak out to defend the lives and souls of children when it truly mattered.
Coming back 6 years later to say 'mistakes were made' is not going to cut it.
But I have great news for you! The best news ever, in fact! All that guilt, sadness, trauma, and cognitive dissonance you are feeling can go away. The truth can set you free. Put aside your desire to fit in the inner circle, put aside your pride, acknowledge your sins, pray for redemption - and it will be granted you! It is never too late! God truly loves you, he died to save you, you do not have to do this on your own. May you and your family find healing and everlasting peace.