239 Experts Claim Coronavirus Is Airborne

239 Experts With 1 Big Claim: The Coronavirus Is Airborne – The New York Times – By Apoorva Mandavilli – July 4, 2020

These experts are only saying what I and certainly many others have been thinking since the start of this plague. Many other types of infectious agents are spread through the air.

The coronavirus is finding new victims worldwide, in bars and restaurants, offices, markets and casinos, giving rise to frightening clusters of infection that increasingly confirm what many scientists have been saying for months: The virus lingers in the air indoors, infecting those nearby.

If airborne transmission is a significant factor in the pandemic, especially in crowded spaces with poor ventilation, the consequences for containment will be significant.

Guidelines Written and Manipulated by Insiders

Professional Societies Should Abstain From Authorship of Guidelines and Disease Definition Statements – John P.A. Ioannidis – Oct 2018

Guidelines and other statements from professional societies have become increasingly influential. These documents shape how disease should be prevented and treated and what should come within the remit of medical care.

Changes in definition of illness can easily increase overnight by millions the number of people who deserve specialist care. This has been seen repeatedly in conditions as diverse as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, composite cardiovascular risk, depression, rheumatoid arthritis, or gastroesophageal reflux.

Similarly, changes in prevention or treatment options may escalate overnight the required cost of care by billions of dollars.

For example, if we accept PROP’s argument that we’re all addicted to our “heroin pills”, we’d all suddenly need “addiction-recovery programs/clinics/residential treatment centers/resorts” for our  “substance abuse” instead of “chronic pain”. 

Borderline personality disorder among chronic pain patients?

This “study” is so garbled it would be comical if it weren’t insinuating that chronic pain patients are mentally ill.  Notice the uncorrected misspelling of the very first word, which is supposed to be “AAPM”

“FAAPM [?] 36th Annual Meeting Scientific Poster Abstracts annualmeeting.painmed.org | #AAPM2020 505 | Psychosocial Borderline personality features among patients with chronic non-cancer pain, barrier versus unexploited targets for effective pain management: a systemic review

Because two pain-oriented medical websites both had fairly demeaning (to pain patients) articles about the implications of this “abstract”, and it was deemed significant enough to be presented at this renowned pain association’s annual meeting, I decided to take a closer look.

It’s a total mess.

Evidence-informed Person-Centered Healthcare

Evidence-informed Person-Centered Healthcare Part I: Do ‘Cognitive Biases Plus’ at Organizational Levels Influence Quality of Evidence? – PubMed – Dec 2014

As our medical system tries to implement Evidence-Based Medicine, it’s becoming more and more clear that the “evidence” isn’t the factual unbiased truth we expect.

Introduction: There is increasing concern about the unreliability of much of health care evidence, especially in its application to individuals.

• Cognitive biases,
• financial and non-financial conflicts of interest, and
• ethical violations

at the levels of individuals and organizations involved in health care undermine the evidence that informs person-centred care.  

A Respected Science Watchdog Raises Eyebrows

A Respected Science Watchdog Raises Eyebrows – by  MICHAEL SCHULSON – Apr 2020

For his Covid-19 work, the Stanford scientist John Ioannidis is being accused of the same bad science he has criticized.

He’s the one I posted about earlier: A Contrarian Response to the COVID-19 Crisis

Over the past two decades, John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine, epidemiology, and population health at Stanford University, has gained a reputation as a widely respected gadfly of global science. His work consistently highlights flaws in research methods, pushing scientists and physicians to be more rigorous in evaluating and applying evidence.  

Flaws Found in Interventional Treatment Guidelines

Flaws Found in Interventional Treatment Guidelines – Pain Medicine News – by Harry Fortuna – Mar 2020

Assessors were unable to give full votes of confidence to any of the four recently evaluated interventional guidelines created by major North American pain medicine societies.

Of further concern,

• only half of the sample studied was found to be of high methodological quality, and
• none of the guidelines surveyed adeptly involved all stakeholders such as patients, providers and payors.

Review: opioid management for chronic noncancer pain

Long‐term opioid management for chronic noncancer pain – free full-text /PMC6494200/ – Cochrane Review: Jan 2010

I’ll start with these two key findings in the author’s conclusions from this extremely long Cochrane Review:

1. Many patients discontinue long‐term opioid therapy (especially oral opioids) due to adverse events or insufficient pain relief; however, weak evidence suggests that patients who are able to continue opioids long‐term experience clinically significant pain relief.

2. Whether quality of life or functioning improves is inconclusive. Many minor adverse events (like nausea and headache) occurred, but serious adverse events, including iatrogenic opioid addiction, were rare.

Propaganda dressed up as scientific research

An Opioid Study So Bad That It Disproves Itself? – American Council of Science and Health – By Josh Bloom — January 23, 2019

A paper in JAMA Open Network tries to hop on the anti-opioid bandwagon but fails so badly that I had to stare at the screen in disbelief for a while.

Association of pharmaceutical industry marketing of opioid products with mortality from opioid related overdoses

The intent of the study is obvious – to let us know that more pharmaceutical money leads to more opioid prescriptions being written, which results in more OD deaths.   

A Contrarian Response to the COVID-19 Crisis

In the coronavirus pandemic, we’re making decisions without reliable data –  By John P.A. Ioannidis – March 17, 2020

Ioannidis became famous for his 2005 paper: “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” and he has been challenging medical dogma ever since.

He has now written a contrarian opinion about our handling of the coronavirus pandemic, arriving, as he often does, at a different calculation from the same data.

I disagree with his rosy projections but his unusual opinion is based on logical arguments, assumptions, and calculations, so I find his ideas interesting and worth considering. I don’t believe he’s right, but I sure wish he were.

The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.  

Truth About the Consequences of Opiophobia

A Dose of Truth about the Consequences of Opiophobia | HCPLive – 2010 – Joel S. Hochman, MD – Jan 2010

In this old article, the author picks apart a study from 2003 which became the backbone of the claims about hyperalgesia. It’s outrageous that a study from 17 years ago is determining our pain care (or lack thereof) today.

As this decade has progressed, some legal experts assumed that as a consequence of certain tort actions (cf. Bergman v. Chin), physicians would be compelled to treat pain effectively in compliance with the community standard of care.

The “community standard of care” no longer exists for pain control because opiophobia is preventing the use of the most effective medication just because some “street drugs” of the same chemical class, like heroin or illicit fentanyl, are being abused by people who then overdose.