This was posted today at Naked Capitalism by an internal medicine doctor who is a regular contributor.
IM Doc
August 8, 2021 at 8:33 am
We continue to have quite a bit of infection in the community. In my own practice, I am usually seeing 5-15 cases a day of COVID. The majority of these cases are vaccinated breakthroughs. There have been 2 whole days this week where the entire day were all vaccinated breakthroughs. Please note this is the outpatient side.
Despite Dr. Walensky’s reassurance to Americans that these are very rare, this has not been my experience at all. These breakthroughs continue to happen in clusters. While the unvaccinated positives tend to be more isolated and far less likely to spread and sicken contacts. The clusters are almost always vaccinated as well. I have no explanation for this. It is my feeling the virus is trying to tell us something. This seems to be consistent with constant news reports of cluster events among the vaccinated all over the country.
The unvaccinated positives are likely underrepresented in my office sample. They are likely younger. They are likely to have no insurance or high copays so very hesitant to get tested. They are likely to get fired if they miss a day of work so they just do not want to know if they are positive. Furthermore, it seems that every effort has been made to make it very difficult for anyone to get tested. Why bother?
As far as the hospital it remains about 50/50 vaccinated/unvaccinated. The percentage of vaccinated patients seems to be slowly creeping up daily. I am hearing from my friends all over the country that the same is true. You no longer hear about 1% vaccinated anymore in the hospital. A slow but surely increasing prevalence of the vaccinated in the hospitals. The vaccinated inpatients tend to be older and vaccinated at the beginning in DEC or JAN. The unvaccinated are younger usually 40-60 almost always with obesity or diabetes. Unlike the last wave, the majority of these patients are in and out in a day or two. I am not saying there are not sick people there are. Just not nearly as many as before. This too is confirmed by my friends. The critically ill are few but are almost entirely made up of the unvaccinated. We have had but 2 vaccinated in the ICU this whole time. The stories you are hearing of crashed hospitals in the big cities are happening because large numbers of non-critical patients are being admitted and discharged with continued large numbers coming into the ER. The other factor is staffing. Nurses have become depressed and are leaving in droves. And the ancillary staff in many places has been decimated by employees leaving because of the vaccine mandates. There is more at work than patient numbers by the panic porn that is all over the MSM.
The vaccines are clearly not working as promised. Large numbers of vaccinated patients are getting sick. I remember when I did the guest post back in December about the Pfizer trials. I was and am gravely concerned about the medical establishment in the guise of the Editors of NEJM referring to these miraculous vaccines, perfect in every way, as a triumph. There are lots of things in medicine the past decades that are indeed miracles. But calling something a triumph before a shot was in the first arm betrayed to me a certain level of hubris and I knew in my heart at that very moment that Nemesis, Hubriss best friend, would soon be making a visit.
These vaccinated patients that are sick are not very happy at all. Many of them are profoundly angry. The lies and misrepresentations are very soon going to start catching up with our leaders. And what I never dreamed would happen has begun to happen this week close to half of my positive COVID patients in an unsolicited manner are demanding to be placed on alternative therapy such as ivermectin. In a very angry manner.
I have no problem using this drug. I used it quite a bit in the first big crash in the fall and winter and started using it again about 6 weeks ago. Using the scientific method as I was so carefully trained to do decades ago, and with the limited tools I have, I have been able to make some observations.
Once a patient, vaccinated or not, becomes positive for COVID in my practice, my nurses or myself call them once in the AM and once in the PM. There is a form we fill out on each of these calls to describe their clinical condition with parameters fever, congestion, shortness of breath, coughing, pulse ox, etc. When the patients have cleared every single one, we quit calling them. We usually have between 15-20 active cases this past few weeks daily. A pattern became very obvious very quickly in this process and I have distilled it with 2 raw numbers. The Ivermectin patients are cleared of symptoms (N of 44) in average of 2.4 days. The Non-Ivermectin patients (N of 19) are cleared of symptoms after 5.7 days. Furthermore, on day 5 of the illness, we always have the patients go and get tested again. The Ivermectin patients have literally a 100% negative rate by Day 5. The non-Ivermectin patients have a 58% clearance rate by Day 5.
I want to make one thing very clear. This is the scientific method. These numbers are consistent with the overall signal that all kinds of studies are showing with this drug. However, I am just one clinician in one office. Nothing dispositive can be said or done with these numbers.
However, it is an indication of yet another complete fail on the part of our medical leaders. These signals have now been out there for about a year. It is at this point, a national embarrassment that nothing has been done to fully evaluate this drug. I will say again, our leaders are not practicing medicine, they are practicing business.
