Category: Health & Medicine

Insurance Companies Increase U.S. Mortality Expectations by 300,000 Due to Covid and “INDIRECT Covid,” aka The Jabs

Since the beginning of the plandemic, the powers-that-be have told us to “follow the science.” But perhaps a better indicator of what’s really happening would be to follow the money. And if you really want to get an accurate view, the money to follow is in life insurance. They know about death better than anyone. It’s what they do.

We reported in January about the insurance executive caught admitting there had been an inexplicable 40% increase in mortalities in 2022. They tried to walk that back, but the cat was out of the bag and it has been verified as being true. Now, a former Blackrock portfolio manager has taken the insurance cover-up and blown it wide open.

During an interview with Kristi Leigh, Edward Dowd gave us multiple bombshells. One that may have been missed came at around the 27-minute mark when he revealed plenty of evidence of mortality dramatically increasing.

“Bottom line is, they saw an acceleration in mortality in the second half of 2021, okay. Given the ‘miracle vaccines,’ that should not have occurred.”

He detailed how OneAmerica CEO Scott Davison revealed the facts during a Chamber of Commerce meeting. The information was not supposed to get out to the public, but it did and it blew up.

“In fact, he put some meat on the bones,” Dowd said. “He said a 10% increase would be a three-standard deviation event. 40% is a once-in-200-year flood. And what you need to understand about insurance companies is they make their money giving whole life policies because they can predict death rates, which are pretty steady.

“They can retract it all they want. That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what they say. Deaths are rising. Now, you can debate why. I know why. You know why.”

He then went over some details that his team had collected regarding the increase in mortalities reported in the 4th quarter of 2021 by the insurance agencies. Here’s a breakdown he posted to Twitter:

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Intracellular Reverse Transcription of Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 In Vitro in Human Liver Cell Line

BLUF:
Whether the findings of the study will occur in living organisms or if the DNA converted from the vaccine’s mRNA will integrate with the cell’s genome is unknown. The authors said more investigations are needed, including in whole living organisms such as animals, to better understand the potential effects of the mRNA vaccine.

“At this stage, we do not know if DNA reverse transcribed from BNT162b2 is integrated into the cell genome. Further studies are needed to demonstrate the effect of BNT162b2 on genomic integrity, including whole genome sequencing of cells exposed to BNT162b2, as well as tissues from human subjects who received BNT162b2 vaccination,” the authors said.

Pfizer Vaccine Goes Into Liver Cells and Is Converted to DNA

The messenger RNA (mRNA) from Pfizer’s COVID vaccine is able to enter human liver cells and is converted into DNA, according to Swedish researchers at Lund University.

The researchers found that when the mRNA vaccine enters the human liver cells, it triggers the cell’s DNA, which is inside the nucleus, to increase the production of the LINE-1 gene expression to make mRNA.

The mRNA then leaves the nucleus and enters the cell’s cytoplasm, where it translates into LINE-1 protein. A segment of the protein called the open reading frame-1, or ORF-1, then goes back into the nucleus, where it attaches to the vaccine’s mRNA and reverse transcribes into spike DNA.

Reverse transcription is when DNA is made from RNA, whereas the normal transcription process involves a portion of the DNA serving as a template to make an mRNA molecule inside the nucleus.

“In this study we present evidence that COVID mRNA vaccine BNT162b2 is able to enter the human liver cell line Huh7 in vitro,” the researchers wrote in the study, published in Current Issues of Molecular Biology. “BNT162b2 mRNA is reverse transcribed intracellularly into DNA as fast as 6 [hours] after BNT162b2 exposure.”

BNT162b2 is another name for the Pfizer vaccine that is marketed under the name Comirnaty.

The whole process occurred rapidly within six hours. The vaccine’s mRNA converting into DNA and being found inside the cell’s nucleus is something that the CDC said would not happen.

“The genetic material delivered by mRNA vaccines never enters the nucleus of your cells,” the CDC claimed falsely on its web page titled “Myths and Facts about COVID-19 Vaccines.”

This is the first time that researchers have shown in vitro or inside a petri dish how an mRNA vaccine is converted into DNA on a human liver cell line, and is what health experts and fact-checkers said for over a year could not occur.

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Or, maybe 4 cups…just to be on the safe side?

This Is the Exact Amount of Coffee You Should Drink, According to a Harvard Brain Expert.

Scientists agree: Drinking coffee is good for you. That’s good news if, like most Americans, you enjoy coffee and perhaps rely on it to help you wake up in the morning or stay alert during the day.

In the last couple of years, more detailed research on coffee has sought to zero in on just how much coffee you should drink every day for maximum health and brain benefits. They’ve found the answer–you should drink three cups………….

CDC quietly lowers the bar for early childhood speech development.

This is a story that first surfaced earlier in the week but hasn’t gained a lot of traction yet. (This is perhaps understandable given the situation in Ukraine, but also likely by intention.) For the first time in decades, the CDC has changed many of the recognized milestones for childhood development in terms of speech and cognitive functions.

These markers are considered important in terms of recognizing when children aren’t progressing quickly enough, suggesting the potential need to determine if some sort of impairment is being observed and if the child may require greater medical attention. The curious thing about the changes instituted by the CDC is that in a majority of the cases, they have lowered the standards rather than raising them. I first noticed this news on Twitter, as so often happens these days.

You can read the new guidelines here. One of the big changes that many critics are focusing on is the former guideline saying that children should normally know approximately fifty words by 24 months or two years of age. That benchmark has now been stealthily raised to 30 months. That’s not insignificant at all. It’s a 25% increase from the previous standard.

The Postmillennial examines the context in which these changes are taking place. It’s hard to ignore the growing body of reports showing that childhood development has been suffering as a result of various COVID protocols, raging from “virtual learning” environments to forcing children to wear face masks.

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Boston abruptly lifts vaccine mandate.

Boston’s new mayor, Michelle Wu, took the city by surprise yesterday when she announced that Beantown’s requirement for proof of vaccination to enter most indoor businesses was being lifted “immediately.” This was particularly good news for bars and restaurants in the city which have struggled to enforce the mandate and seen their customer traffic (and profits) tanking over the course of the pandemic. The reason she gave was yet another “following the science” speech, noting that the city’s positivity, hospitalization, and ICU occupancy rates had all fallen below the previously defined limits. Since that means that even the unvaccinated will now be able to go about their lives a bit more normally, Wu really should answer one pressing question. What about all of the people who wound up getting vaccinated against their will? (CBS Boston)

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has lifted the proof of vaccine requirement for indoor businesses effective immediately. The announcement was made Friday evening.

The city just fell below the third metric it needed to hit in order to loosen the restrictions.

Public health data reported on Friday shows Boston has a 4.0% community positivity rate; 90.7% occupancy rate of adult ICU beds, and a 7-day average of adult COVID-19 hospitalizations at 195.9 per day.

At the Boston restaurant Sonsie, the manager went out front and took down the mandate poster that had been in the window for more than a year. She also informed her staff to stop asking to see immunity passports “immediately.”

The one thing that didn’t change on Friday night was the city’s face mask mandate. Officials said they will be reviewing that policy “in the coming days.” Of course, as we’ve discussed here previously, a mask mandate in a bar or restaurant is nothing more than idiotic posturing and virtue signaling. Customers take off their masks as soon as their beverages and food arrive at the table, so the only people being punished are the employees.

Returning to the question I posed at the top of the article, this ending of vaccination mandates is taking place all over the country now. Those who refused to accept the vaccines will now finally be allowed to mix with the rest of the public like normal human beings. But what of all of the people who didn’t want to be vaccinated but gave in and took the shots just to gain some measure of freedom of movement or keep their jobs? They can’t turn around now and be “de-vaccinated.”

The latest numbers from the CDC tell us that 64.4% of the people in the United States are now “fully vaccinated.” (That means three shots at this point for all but the hangers-on who waited until the last possible moment.) So more than a third of the country – including a majority of young children – are only partially done with getting their shots or are entirely unvaccinated. They will get to return to whatever passes for “normal” these days while those who took the shots against their will carry their lingering resentment of the government mandates with them.

If you weren’t paying attention to the politics involved, you might be surprised at how quickly we went from “the mandates are the only thing that will save us” to “never mind.” But that’s because all of these politicians are able to read their own polling numbers and those numbers look like a dumpster fire at the moment when it comes to COVID mandates. These are political decisions far more than medical decisions. And at least some of these officials are going to be held accountable later this year.

The pandemic is over, except for Fauci and his lackies

Fauci Says the Quiet Part Out Loud About Ending the Pandemic.

White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci was interviewed by ABC News’ Linsey Davis on Wednesday and was asked how we’ll know when the pandemic is over.

Unsurprisingly, Fauci refused to define a threshold.

“In those months ahead, our country, right now, at least, is still seeing about 147,000 new cases of COVID per day,” Davis said. “But what would that threshold be in the future for you to say, okay, the pandemic has passed?”

“You know, there’s no magic number,” Fauci replied. “But you want is to make sure the trajectory keeps going down and down and down. And I think the important issue, and that relates to one of the questions you asked before about the CDC considering giving more precise metrics for decisionmaking, that concentrating more on what the rate of severe disease and hospitalization is will determine that. We don’t know what that number is yet. But that will be much more of a determinant than the rate of infection.”

Why wouldn’t (or couldn’t) Fauci say that once cases remain below a specific number for a period of time, we could confidently consider ourselves past the pandemic?

Fauci could have come up with a really low number, like 25,000 new cases daily, or said the pandemic would be past when COVID-19 cases approach numbers comparable to the seasonal flu. Literally, anything would have been better than his ambiguous response. So, why didn’t he offer a threshold? There have been pandemics in the past and they all ended at some point. So surely there must be some method for determining the end of a pandemic other than “it’s over when we say it’s over.”

It seems like the only reason not to offer a clear endpoint is that Fauci doesn’t want a specific point at which the pandemic would be considered over. As long as it’s ambiguous, the government can continue to justify COVID restrictions. By refusing to commit to anything now, he not only avoids putting the government in a position where people will expect all restrictions to be loosened or lifted, but he also gives Democrats cover by not admitting that there won’t be an end.

The people want the pandemic to be over with, but the Biden administration does not. That much is clear.

You can watch the entire interview below:

Will the ‘Unvaxxed’ Have the Last Laugh?

For over a year now, the messaging from our “health experts” and government leaders has been as dreary as it has been monotonal: Take the covid “vaccine” or die.

That talking point was reiterated by President Biden* just a few weeks ago when he warned the “unvaxxed” would face “a winter of severe disease and death.” And that was before New Jersey’s resident rodent meteorologist, Milltown Mel, shuffled off this mortal coil just prior to Groundhog Day. So I guess that means, in New Jersey at least, another six weeks of severe disease and death.

Originally, of course, we were told the mRNA injections would prevent people from contracting the disease. “If you get vaccinated, you won’t get covid” was the mantra recited for months, in various forms and multiple forums, by Drs. Fauci, Walensky, and Murthy, President Biden*, and many others. We were also assured that sufficiently jabbed people don’t spread the virus, with Fauci claiming the injections constitute a “dead end for covid.”

It’s important not to forget those statements, as the same people now insist they never promised any such thing. Perhaps that’s because, in the face of overwhelming evidence, they’ve been forced to admit jabbed people can and do get covid and can and do give it to others. Said Walensky just a few weeks ago, “what [the vaccines] can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.” Even Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was forced to acknowledge that his products now offer “limited, in any, protection.”

But what about the vaunted “death benefit” from the mRNA injections? They still protect against serious illness and death, right? Well, yes, that does seem to be the case—but the effect is waning fast. Moreover, the claim itself comes with several asterisks.

There have always been questions about how we count “covid deaths,” as both the CDC and the UK’s National Health Service have recently acknowledged. But if anything, those problems have been amplified in the way we differentiate between “vaccinated” and “unvaccinated” deaths.

For one thing, the most commonly cited number to prove “vaccine efficacy”—“90 percent of covid deaths are among the unvaccinated”—is fundamentally flawed because it goes back to the earliest days of the injections when almost no one had gotten them. Obviously, nearly all who died of (or with) covid in January and February of 2021 were “unvaccinated.”

Moreover, our health officials have been engaged for over a year in a kind of statistical sleight of hand, categorizing people who have taken the injections as “unvaccinated” up until 14 days after their second shot, which means at least five or six weeks have passed since their first shot. In doing so, they ignore evidence that the shots actually make people more susceptible to the virus in the short term. So if you contract covid after getting both shots, but prior to the closing of the 14-day window, and then die, you are considered an “unvaccinated” death. (They’re playing this same trick with the booster shots, too.)

This method also does not account for those who die as a result of immediate adverse reactions to the shots. Such deaths are generally numbered among the “unvaccinated,” even though it was the “vaccine” that killed them. But that’s a topic for another day.

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Sorry about the sparce posting folks.
Ich Bin got a ride in the AmberLamps™ this morning and spent a few hours hooked up for sound in the ER to figure out whether I was having a heart attack, or ‘merely’ a spectacular reaction to something I ate last night.
It appears it was the latter.
AK was kind enough to come by and drive me back home, saving cab fare, and he needed to pick up some NFA paperwork I had printed off for him, so it worked out well for the both of us.

We now return you to our regular programming………………

Hypocrisy O’ The Day

From The Atlantic ,which is a laugh, as the staff there were rabid pro-mask/pro lockdown……up until the politics changed.

Open Everything. The time to end pandemic restrictions is now.

Quip O’ The Day

“Polling must be really bad for Ted Lieu, of all people, to call for the recognition of natural immunity and an end to restrictions.”–Ian Cheong

Lieu’s chart ends in October, even before Omicron hit.
He must be so desperate to end restrictions that he’ll post anything, and he’s just the moron to do it.

US Defense Database DMED Tracked Exploding Number of Vaccine-Related Injuries

When US Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) held a hearing on vaccine safety in January this year, a number of DOD whistleblowers stepped forward with alarming data. They shared data from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) which tracks every illness of military members.

The purpose of gathering such data is expressly to spot adverse health trends that could affect combat readiness. It is therefore accurate, complete and designed for early detection.

Lawyer Thomas Renz reported on five years of data during the hearing which showed an alarming rise in medical problems related to Covid vaccines. The whistleblowers stepped forward because their superiors had ignored the problem. Renz plans to pursue the matter in a US federal court.

Arguably, the DMED is the best epidemiological database in the world and since neither Pfizer nor Moderna is able to provide better data, this upward trend related to vaccine injury must be cause for great concern.

In a declaration under penalty of perjury, the three military physicians Samuel Sigoloff, Peter Chambers, and Theresa Long, exposed the 300 percent increase in DMED codes registered for miscarriages in the military in 2021 over the five-year average. The five-year average has been 1499 codes for miscarriages per year, but during the first 10 months of 2021, it shot up to 4 182.

The same trend was seen in spiking cancer cases, from a five-year average of 38 700 per year to 114 645 in the first 11 months of 2021, coinciding with the vaccine. And reported neurological disorders increased by an incredible 1000 percent.

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The number I’ve seen is that it is estimated that the lockdowns prevented on average  0.2%  – that’s “Maybe Two (2) out of a Thousand” – deaths in comparison with just trusting people to do the right thing.
Sorry, that small of a number is statistical noise, which means that there is no evidence the lockdowns did anything but disrupt our entire economy and empower the tyrant authoritarians. Which, to be frank is the silver lining because they’re now exposed to the world for future action.

Johns Hopkins Analysis: ‘Lockdowns Should be Rejected Out of Hand.’

The aura of “expert” has lost its luster during Covid, as our supposedly bigger brains have been proved wrong repeatedly.

Two of these have been Ezekiel Emanuel and Anthony Fauci. Both were enthusiastic proponents of societal lockdowns as a means of preventing deaths and the spread of Covid. We now know from a Johns Hopkins blockbuster meta-analysis that “shutting it down,” in Donald Trump’s awkward phrase, did very little to prevent deaths.

It’s a long, arcane, and detailed analysis, and I can’t present every nuance or statistic here. But I think these are the primary takeaways. From the study:

Overall, we conclude that lockdowns are not an effective way of reducing mortality rates during a pandemic, at least not during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results are in line with the World Health Organization Writing Group (2006), who state, “Reports from the 1918 influenza pandemic indicate that social-distancing measures did not stop or appear to dramatically reduce transmission […]

In Edmonton, Canada, isolation and quarantine were instituted; public meetings were banned; schools, churches, colleges, theaters, and other public gathering places were closed; and business hours were restricted without obvious impact on the epidemic.” Our findings are also in line with Allen’s (2021) conclusion: “The most recent research has shown that lockdowns have had, at best, a marginal effect on the number of Covid 19 deaths.”

Why might that be?

Mandates only regulate a fraction of our potential contagious contacts and can hardly regulate nor enforce handwashing, coughing etiquette, distancing in supermarkets, etc. Countries like Denmark, Finland, and Norway that realized success in keeping COVID-19 mortality rates relatively low allowed people to go to work, use public transport, and meet privately at home during the first lockdown. In these countries, there were ample opportunities to legally meet with others.

Worse, the lockdowns caused tremendous harm:

Unintended consequences may play a larger role than recognized. We already pointed to the possible unintended consequence of SIPOs, which may isolate an infected person at home with his/her family where he/she risks infecting family members with a higher viral load, causing more severe illness. But often, lockdowns have limited peoples’ access to safe (outdoor) places such as beaches, parks, and zoos, or included outdoor mask mandates or strict outdoor gathering restrictions, pushing people to meet at less safe (indoor) places. Indeed, we do find some evidence that limiting gatherings was counterproductive and increased COVID-19 mortality

What lessons should be learned (my emphasis)?

The use of lockdowns is a unique feature of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns have not been used to such a large extent during any of the pandemics of the past century. However, lockdowns during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic have had devastating effects. They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy. These costs to society must be compared to the benefits of lockdowns, which our meta-analysis has shown are marginal at best. Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument.

To which I would add another: We can never squelch free discourse and debate on public-health issues again.

People who argued against the “scientific consensus” about the lockdowns were stifled, censored by Big Tech, denigrated by the media, and mocked by establishment scientists. That was essentially “anti-science.” The scientific method needs heterodox voices to speak freely if it is to function properly.

This subsequent look-back shows why. To a large degree, those with the officially disfavored views–such as the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration—were correct on this matter.

Will we learn the lesson? Yes, if our goal is to ably discern and apply the best policy options, which can be a messy process. No, if the point is to allow those in charge of institutional science to exert societal control.

The narrative, the whole narrative, and nothing but the narrative

Daily Caller Reporter Asks Why Biden Admin Doesn’t Stress Living Healthier Lifestyles. Psaki Starts Talking About Masks.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki didn’t say whether The White House was going to push for Americans to live healthily to reduce their risk of severe COVID-19.

During the press briefing, Daily Caller White House correspondent Shelby Talcott asked White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki if President Joe Biden and his medical advisors have considered telling Americans to live healthier during the pandemic. Psaki did not directly answer and instead told Americans to get vaccinated and wear masks.

“We have seen an effort from a few other countries to include a push for living a healthier lifestyle as part of its pandemic response. There’s been studies indicating efforts like weight loss can help prevent some of the more serious effects of COVID-19,” Talcott said. “Why hasn’t the president included a push for healthier lifestyles in his COVID messaging, in addition to pushing Americans to get vaccinated?”

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This?

Video: Fauci Decrees Kids Under Four Years Old Will Get Three COVID Vaccines

Appearing during a White House press briefing Wednesday, Anthony Fauci decreed that children under the age of four will eventually be subjected to a “three-dose regimen” of COVID vaccines.

“Dose and regimen for children 6 months to 24 months worked well, but it turned out the other group from 24 months to 4 years did not yet reach the level of non-inferiority, so the studies are continued,” Fauci noted.

He added, “It looks like it will be a three-dose regimen. I don’t think we can predict when we will see an EUA [Emergency Use Authorization] with that.”

Then this?

Horowitz: Whistleblowers share DOD medical data that blows vaccine safety debate wide open

Data, transparency, and surveillance. That is what has been missing from the greatest experiment on humans of all time throughout this pandemic. Now, military medical whistleblowers have come forward with what they claim is perhaps the most accurate and revealing data set on vaccine safety one could possibly find.

The pro-pharma politicians and media claim the CDC’s pharmacosurveillance tool “VAERS” is not good enough to trigger investigations into the shots because anyone can supposedly submit a vaccine adverse event entry. Thus, all the concerning safety signals from VAERS are being ignored, even though that system was put in place as a consolation to the public for absolving vaccine manufacturers of liability. Well, now some military whistleblowers are coming forward to present data that, if verified, would signal extremely disturbing safety concerns about the vaccine that make the VAERS data look like child’s play. Continue reading “”

Florida Doctor: Families Sneak Ivermectin to Loved Ones in Hospitals With COVID-19, See Improvement

A Florida doctor says families of loved ones hospitalized with COVID-19 are resorting to desperate measures when approved treatments have failed.

And when it’s not too late, some have seen tremendous success by sneaking medications prohibited by hospitals to patients, says Eduardo Balbona, an independent internist in Jacksonville.

He’s helped dozens of seriously ill patients recover using ivermectin and other drugs and supplements not officially approved in the treatment of COVID-19, he says.

Hospitals receive payments from the federal government for treating patients with COVID-19. But those payments are tied to their use of approved treatments only, as outlined in the CARES Act. When there’s nothing left to try under those protocols, families naturally research alternatives,  Balbona says, often learning about treatments touted by independent physicians around the country.

Hoping to try anything that might work, families around the country have filed lawsuits asking judges to intervene.

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JAMA is the Journal of the AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
My concern from the start was lack of testing for long term side effects required under standard protocols that was not required under the Emergency Use Authorization.
Well, the test subjects for the long term effects turned out to be the population that took the jab. And it appears that some bad side effects don’t take all that long to start showing up.

JAMA: Myocarditis Cases Reported After mRNA-Based COVID-19 Vaccination in the US From December 2020 to August 2021.

Key Points

Question  What is the risk of myocarditis after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination in the US?

Findings  In this descriptive study of 1626 cases of myocarditis in a national passive reporting system, the crude reporting rates within 7 days after vaccination exceeded the expected rates across multiple age and sex strata. The rates of myocarditis cases were highest after the second vaccination dose in adolescent males aged 12 to 15 years (70.7 per million doses of the BNT162b2 vaccine), in adolescent males aged 16 to 17 years (105.9 per million doses of the BNT162b2 vaccine), and in young men aged 18 to 24 years (52.4 and 56.3 per million doses of the BNT162b2 vaccine and the mRNA-1273 vaccine, respectively).

Meaning  Based on passive surveillance reporting in the US, the risk of myocarditis after receiving mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines was increased across multiple age and sex strata and was highest after the second vaccination dose in adolescent males and young men.

Abstract

Importance  Vaccination against COVID-19 provides clear public health benefits, but vaccination also carries potential risks.

The risks and outcomes of myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination are unclear.

 

Observation O’ The Day:
“I am aware that people can be removed from the transplant list for engaging in behavior that increases the rust of transplant failure, such as someone needing a liver transplant continuing to drink alcohol.

However, falling back on this justification to deny someone a transplant for refusing a highly contentious vaccine that may have no appreciable effect on the latest variant and may in face cause hear related issues in a patient with a bad heart, seems less about science and more about politics.

To be honest, so many people have been screaming for the unvaccinated to be killed or left to die from medical neglect that I can’t give a hospital the benefit of the doubt that they are making this decision based on a desire for the patient outcome and not partisanship.” –J.Kb.

Occupy Democrats applauds Boston hospital for removing father from heart transplant list because he hasn’t gotten the COVID vaccine

People concerned that COVID precautions have gotten out of control may have some reason to feel that way:

More:

An unvaccinated and gravely ill 31-year-old father-of-two has been taken off the donor list for a heart transplant by a Boston hospital because he ‘does not believe’ in the COVID vaccine.

DJ Ferguson, who has a hereditary heart condition that causes his lungs and heart to fill with blood and fluid, was denied the life-saving organ transplant by Boston Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.

The hospital said it removed Ferguson from the donor list because all transplant recipients need to get the vaccine in order to ‘create both the best chance for successful operation and also the patient’s survival after transplantation.’

 

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New study on firearm related suicide can’t prove what we all know

A recent research letter concerning suicide by firearm highlights something that most gun owners already know. The short form of what was reported is that gun owners are not going to tell health care providers that they own firearms. Okay, that’s at least the conjecture that the authors of the paper were not willing outright say. The study involved looking at death due to suicide Between January 1, 2016, and December 31, 2019 in Washington State. The paper, Patient-Reported Firearm Access Prior to Suicide Death, does put a good deal of effort in extracting information from the Washington State death records and electronic health record data they had available. Some of this data was not considered “sensitive” enough to require consent from patients.

The Kaiser Permanente institutional review board approved this study and waived the need for patient informed consent, because use of this protected health information involved no more than a minimal risk to the privacy of individuals. This study followed the reporting guideline for case series.

What did their study uncover? A good deal of statistics that seem to be consistent regardless of who’s doing the study and for the most part where. With males (86%) and whites (85%) ranking in the highest numbers of persons to die by suicide. The other statistic which brings this topic to the pages of Bearing Arms, and will continue to, 48% of completed suicides were done via firearm, and 52% via all “other means”.

In a recent conversation I had with Cam, he noted that he’s more interested in putting an end to all suicides, regardless of methods. I tend to agree with Cam on the overall goal, however I understand that this emphasis on “the gun” has to do with the lethality of potential methods. Depending on which study one is looking at, approximately 85-95% of suicide attempts with a firearm result in death. “Other” means that might be attempted result in death approximately 20% of instances. Further, the majority of people that survive a death by suicide attempt don’t go on to try again.

My big question’s always a quality of life question. Why do so many people want to end their lives in the United States? What about our society, pressures, needs, etc. cause so many people to want to end their lives? If 2/3rds of the approximate 40K deaths due to firearms are suicides, it should pull into sharp focus that in this country an individual is more than likely to use a firearm on themselves 66% of the time over another individual. All the “gun crime” reporting tends to ignore this fact.

Where does this leave us with the study? Some of their conclusions paint a picture that I don’t suspect to change anytime soon. The data the study pulled from utilized a questionnaire that asked patients if they were firearm owners or not.

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