Poly-pharmaceutical Americans and Covid Mortality
Further notes on Fauci's reign of error and terror
In various posts and comment threads on Substack, far better content and analysis than what you’ll find in the MSM. Let me give some deserved recognition to Good Citizen, Coronawise, and Musings of a Retired Shrink among many, many others.
Your trigger warning: this post blames you, blames me. Not simply the “system.” We do not get to rant against and feel morally superior to the OTHER: our presumed inferior fellow Americans, whether MSNBC worshippers, CNN Lemonheads, or FOX nation-ites. Let’s talk about drugs.
Poly-pharmaceutical Americans
For 2021, for a USA population of roughly 333 million people, we had an estimated 4,690,000,000 (4.69 billion) prescriptions filled [1].
We might reasonably expect that older Americans take more medication. So let’s take a closer look at the youngest age ranges. The last year for which we have good public data is 2013 [2], a year in which only 4.24 billion prescriptions [1] were filled (90% of last year’s total):
For the age range 0 to 18 years, the annual per capita prescription rate is 4.2.
For 19 to 25 years, 5.2.
We would expect younger people to be healthier. Increasingly, this is no longer a safe assumption. But from 26 years and older, the poly-pharmaceutical trend accelerates — with an annual national prescription per capita rate of only 12.2 [2].
Medicated Womb to Grave
So we now have Americans who are chronically medicated from womb to grave. Not even “cradle to grave”: womb to grave. We have generations of poly-pharmaceutical dependent citizens as subjects. Well, good if this has made us happier and healthier. But by nearly every available account, poly-pharmaceutical America is a public health catastrophe.
We now have generations of poly-pharmaceutical Americans, chronically medicated from womb to grave.
The obesity rate has tripled over the past half century (a 50 year perspective) [3, 4]. Diabetes in the USA has gone from 1.05% of the population in 1961 to 10.5% in 2021 (a 60 year perspective) [5, 6]. Diseases related to metabolic syndrome have been surging. Mental health issues, likewise.
The American National Crisis: Metabolic Syndrome:
What is metabolic syndrome? I quote at length but I trust still in accordance with fair usage from Jonathon Sullivan, MD, PhD, FACEP, SSC [7]:
Components of the Metabolic Syndrome
Visceral obesity – accumulation of fat around the internal organs. This change is highly correlated with the more visible truncal obesity, variously defined by the (rather crude) metrics of waist-hip ratio or BMI.
Insulin Resistance and Hyperglycemia – loss of cellular sensitivity to insulin signaling leads to numerous derangements. This includes diabetes or a pre-diabetic state characterized by poor serum glucose control.
Hypertension – elevated blood pressure.
Dyslipidemia – derangement in serum triglyceride (fat) and HDL/ LDL (cholesterol) levels.
Inflammation – This is not a classical component of the metabolic syndrome, and is not used in most established definitions. I include it here because of the increasing recognition that metabolic syndrome involves chronic over-activation of cellular and biological defense mechanisms that cause pain and damage to tissues.
This was written in 2016, before the Covid pandemic. But Dr. Sullivan’s next words about the costs of metabolic syndrome would prove factual prophecy, a reality-based prediction of the yet unknown pandemic.
“These miseries” caused by metabolic syndrome, Sullivan lamented, “fill my days as an emergency physician” [7]. Why?
Because the people “who get sick and come to the emergency department are disproportionately fat, hypertensive, and diabetic. That’s because people who are fat, hypertensive, and diabetic are more likely to get sick, and in a vast variety of unpleasant ways.
People suffering from metabolic syndrome were also far more likely to die with Covid-19 — both the CDC and independent research acknowledge this [8, 9].
As Dr. Sullivan wrote in 2016 [7]:
People with metabolic syndrome or its components are more likely to become frail, to suffer from stroke, cardiovascular disease and heart attack, to develop heart failure, to develop kidney failure, … depression, loss of independence, and premature death.
So we add “dying with” and even “dying from” Covid-19 to that list of metabolic syndrome risks and results.
Mass Formation Psychosis, Metabolic Syndrome, or Both?
We had a recent public non-debate on American Covid policies and mass formation psychosis, which was dismissed as misinformation and conspiracy theory. Okay. Good.
Fact check this: Japan has no vaccine mandates, allows their medical professionals to treat Covid-infected patients with Ivermectin, and has overall FAR superior Covid public health outcomes than the USA.
Fact check this: Denmark, which handled the Covid pandemic significantly different than the USA and has FAR superior Covid public health outcomes, has now ended all Covid restrictions.
Fact check this: Despite the vaccine rollout and mandates in 2021, and various Covid lockdowns, mask mandates, et cetera, more Americans died with Covid in 2021 than in 2020. And Americans below the age of 74 had a HIGHER relative risk of dying with Covid.
So we have nations which handled the pandemic significantly different than the USA, and have better outcomes than the USA. Often, far better outcomes. And for the USA, the results for 2021 (the year of vaccine mandates) were worse than those for 2020 (the year with no vaccines publicly available). But noticing this is a conspiracy? Truth, disinformation. (See Michelle Rabin’s “The Era of the Big Lie”; see Diane Perlman’s take-down of the CNN smears on the 23 January 2022 protest in Washington, DC, against the Covid mandates).
Here’s the real problem with the the mass psychosis formation hypothesis. We did not just surrender control of our minds: we surrendered control of our bodies. This began decades ago with the rise of poly-pharmaceutical America.
Anthony Fauci and the Rise of Poly-Pharmaceutical America
Robert Kennedy Jr’s best-selling polemic must be read with skepticism, care and caution. But Kennedy is correct in stating [10] that Anthony Fauci
presided over cataclysmic declines in public health, including an exploding chronic disease epidemic that has made the “Fauci generation ” — children born after his elevation to NIAID kingpin in 1984 — the sickest generation in American history, and has made Americans among the least healthy citizens on the planet.
Our own government data, as I cited earlier, shows the same.
Kennedy further claims that “Dr. Fauci played a historic role as the leading architect of agency capture — the corporate seizure of America’s public health agencies by the pharmaceutical industry” [10]. This claim is well-supported by the evidence [10].
Likewise, the FDA does indeed — according to it’s own report — receive “46 percent, or $2.8 billion” of it’s budget through “industry user fees” [11]: 46% of its budget comes from big pharma. (It does not end with the FDA. Please read substacker Dr. Michelle Rubin’s post on “The AMA has been captured”).
Over decades, we have become unhealthier. We, the people: the young and old alike. The solutions we have been offered time and time again: another pill, another shot, another prescription.
Fauci’s Reign of Error and Terror
As for Covid, with now two vaccination shots, two boosters and counting, Fauci has offered us — in fact, mandated us — an mRNA prescription. I reviewed earlier the results — or lack thereof. Likewise, a recent John Hopkins University study found little to no benefit — but much harm — caused by the lockdowns [12].
It seems most probable that hundreds of thousands of American lives would have been saved if we had focused on therapeutics and early treatment in equal measure to or even in priority to vaccines. (See Good Citizen’s take). If the gyms had not been closed. If Americans had not been forced into social isolation. If people had made the decision to eat healthier, live healthier. If each person had accepted that their health is their personal responsibility: that their health is not a matter to be delegated to the state, to big pharma, to Anthony Fauci.
To his credit, Saajar Enjeti gets this mostly right:
Moving Forward, Accepting Responsibility
Fauci’s reign of error and terror must end. But that will not suffice. Holding him accountable is not enough. We must develop an alternative to poly-pharmaceutical America. It begins with bodily autonomy, and accepting personal responsibility.
Joe Rogan is now hated by many because he practices bodily autonomy, because he accepts personal responsibility for his health, and because he recently and publicly advocated that others might do the same.
Unacceptable. Because we will no longer hold ourselves accountable, take responsibility for anything. Blame capitalism, racism, communism, woke-ism. Just not you, not me. Yet so many Americans seem to openly hate their bodies, hate themselves, hate their lives. So they target Joe Rogan. Silencing him is the change we all need. Really?
Our “normal” lifestyles based on convenience, lacking mindful consumption, are vastly dysfunctional and even destructive. Environmentally destructive, beyond doubt.
You can improve your health, save money, free your mind, and incrementally benefit our global ecosystem all at the same time— and all with the same actions: eat real food (mostly plants), stay active, and maintain your key relationships while trying to develop new friendships.
What you do as an individual matters greatly — to you. To your health. To your family. To your friends and core network.
Recognize this is a physical struggle, as much as a political or intellectual or ideological one. You only have freedom if and insofar as you practice it. Reject the learned helplessness propagated by the state, academia, and MSM: the ideology that nothing the individual does can matter, so instead you must subsume yourself to a presumed but ever-redefined and ever-vanishing greater good. In truth, what you do as an individual matters greatly — to you. To your health. To your family. To your friends and core network.
Take back control of your body. Otherwise, intellectual freedom seems little more than an illusion. The burden? It’s on you. It’s on me.
Last words to Dr. John Sullivan [7]:
Exercise is the most powerful medicine in the world. This is not a novel observation, but it is an oft-overlooked one. That’s because, as we’ve seen, the modern concept of a “medicine” is almost synonymous with “drug.” Because exercise doesn’t make big money for doctors and drug companies. And because, unlike taking pills, exercise involves getting up off your butt and doing something for yourself. There’s plenty of blame to go around, but at the end of the day, we each take responsibility for our own health, one way or another.