Here we go…

Hello, friends and family of Happy Family Chiropractic! Today’s topic is one that honestly I have been avoiding because of the volatility of the situation. However, I feel I should talk about it today because of the recent changes in the mandates put out by our local government in Juneau. With my undergraduate education in biology and biochemistry and my chiropractic education, I feel well equipped to discuss this topic. So let’s get into it. I will do my best to differentiate between my personal opinion and research. I will also do my best to include research that does not have implicit bias within. 

Current Mandates, CDC, and CBJ 

Currently, the local guidelines for the city and Bureau of Juneau (CBJ) are becoming more relaxed. We will start seeing people’s faces again because the mask mandate is being lifted slightly per the CDC’s guidelines. When I first heard about this, I was pretty excited! Then I got to thinking, in my opinion, the masks may have been something we should never have been forced to do. This is frustrating because I do not like when my liberty taken from me. To stay healthy, I exercise 2-3 hours a day. I eat a very clean diet of lots of plants, clean meat and fat, little to no processed sugar or processed carbohydrates. I go to bed at 9 pm and get up around 430 or 5 am to start my day. I have never touched alcohol, tobacco, or any other recreational drug. I also get receive regular chiropractic adjustments so that my nervous system continues to adapt properly. These choices allow me to adapt to my ever-changing external environment continually. I take full responsibility for my own health, and I do not rely on others for my health.

Public Safety Mandates or Public Safety Guesses? 

At best, Mask mandates and social distancing were a guess. The government and CDC guessed that by requiring the country to mask up and social distance, we would help slow the spread of the disease. I would say that it was a good guess, and the research behind aerosol spread of viruses backed it up. Many respiratory viruses are spread within an aerosol. This means the virus gets trapped in the mucus of the host and when the host exhales, coughs, or sneezes the trapped virus is expelled within the mucus or saliva. The mask can trap the mucus and saliva thus hopefully trapping the virus. It all makes sense, but there are a few things that don’t make sense. Let me explain. 

There’s How Many Cases of COVID-19?

Nobody really knows how many cases of COVID-19 there were in the world, it is impossible to know.  Let’s use a little logic to explain why. The total number of cases in the USA over the course of the pandemic have been 33.4 Million as of June 7, 2021. This is the number of confirmed reported cases. One study says that 81% of cases are asymptomatic. The WHO says 80% of cases are asymptomatic. Then a Third source says that it’s probably somewhere between 5% and 80% of cases that are asymptomatic. These are only three articles, and they each have different numbers. The third article is actually a list of 21 other articles that all have different percentages of asymptomatic cases reported. There is a lot of inconsistency here, and these all fall within cases we have information on. What I want you to draw from this is that we have not been able to keep consistent track of the asymptomatic cases that come in and get tested. So drawing up information about how infectious a person is who doesn’t show symptoms would be impossible—based solely on the inability to track reported asymptomatic cases. 

The next issue is that we have no way of knowing how many unreported cases there are. If you believe that 33.4 million is the actual total number of cases in the United States, I’m sorry to inform you that you are mistaken. There is no way to know the amount of unreported cases both symptomatic and asymptomatic, that have occurred in the United States. IF COVID-19 is as virulent as we have been told, then the number of cases is actually much higher than reported statistics simply because of undocumented cases. This just doesn’t make sense. 

Comorbidities and COVID Fatalities

To start this next section, I want to define comorbidity. According to Google, a comorbidity is defined as “the simultaneous presence of two or more diseases or medical conditions in a patient.” A patient presenting with two or more diseases is a patient with comorbidity. In the chiropractic world, we often look out for comorbidities that can have an affect on the nervous system or skeletal system because they change how we care for patients. In the COVID-19 world, a comorbidity means that you are more likely to die. 83.29% of COVID-19 deaths reported had at least one comorbidity. The most common comorbidities of Covid 19 deaths listed were heart disease and cancer, which happen to be the two most common causes of death in the United States. This information begs the question, “Was it the comorbidity, or was it covid?” I can’t help but think that the 178 Billion dollars that was handed out to the hospitals from the federal government may have played a role in the reporting. In one report they were given $13,000 per covid 19 diagnosis and $39,000 every time they put a patient on a ventilator. I know there are great doctors out there fighting against this pandemic, but hospitals are ultimately businesses. When their financial outcome can change based on writing down one deadly disease as a comorbidity and the other deadly disease as the cause of death, it’s tough to say that a business wouldn’t do that. Especially because these businesses wouldn’t be making anything up, they would simply be electing the higher-paid job. All said and done this would have skewed the numbers for the research and that doesn’t make sense to me. 

Have You Heard of Unbiased Research?

Unbiased, is there such a thing?. I have found myself constantly checking my biases as I write this. I am sure, however, that I am guilty of confirmation bias within this text. I am only human. I cannot see all my flaws and therefore must apologize. The same thing happens in all research. Vaccine studies are funded by vaccine makers who profit from successful vaccinations from successful research—chiropractors profit on research that furthers chiropractic information and knowledge. Shoe companies benefit from the research that proves that their shoe is better for the feet. The powers that be must be benefiting from the COVID-19 research that is going on because they have a pretty penny invested in the outcome of this research. There is no such thing as unbiased research. If you want an example, just pull up google scholar and research the opposing views of one subject. You will find that there is “peer-reviewed research” on almost any topic for both sides of the debate. In order to find legitimate unbiased research, you have to find researchers that go back to the root of the scientific theory, which in a nutshell is that science is constantly trying to prove itself wrong. Research currently is done in a manner known as inductive reasoning. Basically, researchers take a small sample of whatever they’re studying, Observe it over a period of time, record those observations, and then try to extrapolate the data to fit a larger sample size. Researchers are able to hypothesize utilizing the observations they’ve made but it’s simply an educated guess. Then over time, more observations are made and the research that was done is either solidified or proven wrong. The basis, however, is that scientific research is always trying to prove itself wrong. That is what makes sound research. When someone tells me “the science proves it” my response is that the science proves nothing except that it was wrong in the past. Just look at how doctors’ opinions on smoking have changed over the last 100 years.

How to Lie with Statistics

There is a book called How to Lie with Statistics, by Darrel Huff. It was endorsed by Bill Gates, who has been a proponent of COVID-19 vaccinations and health safety mandates even though he lacks any medical credibility. I was curious about what this book taught, so I bought a copy. I am glad I did. The book shows how everything except for the actual numbers are manipulated to prove a point. Graphs are changed, baselines are altered, and images are utilized to convey a message utilizing numbers that are kept constant. I started noticing that some of the tricks mentioned in the book are used in all of the media I consume. This makes me think that the media is all pushing narratives they want me to believe, not necessarily presenting straight facts and letting me decide, and that doesn’t make sense to me. 

COVID Vaccine Outside My Scope of Practice. I am Pro Informed Consent

You might say that I am overstepping and that speaking about covid is outside of my scope. I am not. I am a doctor of chiropractic and have acquired all necessary education to speak on this very subject. I am not a neck and back fixer but a teacher of health and wellness. In this article, I won’t touch on this vaccine simply because there is not enough research to know what will happen in the short or long term regarding those who have been vaccinated. Time will tell. I just hope that in the future, we are not plagued with tv and radio commercials that sound something like this, “if you or a loved one has experienced serious symptoms or death following a COVID-19 injection, you are entitled to significant financial compensation.” This is the only reason we all know what mesothelioma is, right? Instead of forcing people to comply, why don’t we change some of the other things that would actually make us a healthier population? 

I Don’t Believe the Pandemic Protocol is About Keeping Us Healthy

The healthiest people I know and am acquainted with do three things; They exercise, eat healthily and get plenty of sleep. If the powers really wanted us to be healthier, they would be pushing these aspects of healthy living harder and likely would have changed things a long time ago. Currently, 74% of U.S. adults are overweight or obese. Roughly 10% of the population has type 2 diabetes. Additionally, 25%, or 1 in 4, U.S. deaths are related to heart disease, making heart disease the number 1 cause of death in the United States. These conditions, along with many others, are all caused by a state known as metabolic syndrome. In order to avoid metabolic syndrome and therefore decrease the risk of the aforementioned conditions, you need to live healthy, eat right, exercise, and get enough sleep. That’s why the diseases mentioned are considered preventable diseases; they’re preventable with lifestyle choices. When we are living healthy, our bodies are better equipped to overcome other stressors as well like the common cold, the flu, or COVID-19, because our immune systems are strong when we are healthy. This raises the question–Why were gyms shut down? Why were farmer’s markets canceled? Why did the government support us in being unhealthier during a pandemic when we should be at our healthiest to fight off infection? 

Why Are We So Unhealthy?

I genuinely believe that we are unhealthy because of the standard American diet, also known as the SAD diet—high amounts of sugar, processed carbohydrates, and inflammatory fats in everything that is convenient. I want to delve more into this in a later article, but I do want to bring up sugar. Think about it – if the government really wanted us to be healthier, they would stop subsidizing sugar. The US government spends 4 billion dollars a year on sugar subsidies. Sugar consumption is directly related to obesity, and obesity is the most obvious factor of metabolic syndrome, which, as discussed before, is a major risk factor for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. Sugar is not the sole proprietor responsible for the obesity epidemic, but it is a factor that the government could easily change by changing where it spends our tax dollars. This is one of the examples that just don’t make sense to me when the government says that they do things for our health. The strangest thing to me is that the number one cause of death in the United States is a preventable disease remedied through diet and exercise. But there is a problem. As a country, we are addicted to sugar. There is a quick fix, but we are not willing to drop the doughnut and dust off the running shoes. The government knows that we’re addicted to sugar as a population.

I Won’t Deny That Covid is Real, It Is Real, and People Have Suffered.

To finish up here, I just want to clear the air a bit. Miracles happen every day in modern medicine. I refer people who come into my clinic to MDs because sometimes conditions surpass the body’s ability to stay in the fight. The medical world can step in to truly help the people we all serve. I have great respect for what they do. I also know that COVID-19 is a real virus that has affected many lives in the past year, way too many. I cannot take that away from people. I have not lived their experience. I wanted to voice these concerns simply because the response has not entirely made sense to me. Numbers are skewed, the media is one-sided, unqualified people are qualified, and qualified people are labeled as unqualified. If the threat is as real as we are told, we would not have to be bribed with doughnuts and beer for the miracle cure. We would not have to be tested to know that we had contracted such a deadly disease. If someone presents irrefutable data, I will gladly change my mind. But until that happens, this is where I stand.