"Your Slip Is Hanging"

If you ever saw the 2004 movie, Ray, with Jamie Foxx, you may recall the scene where Ray Charles is with his manager, and his manager is trying to tell him that his drug use is becoming a problem. Ray argues he has it all under control and that everything is fine. As his manager tries to get him to see that everything is not fine, he tells Ray, “Your slip is hanging.”

I never forgot it because it was so right on. How many times have you been faced with a situation where something is obvious to many but unbeknownst to one? They don’t know, they don’t see, they can’t admit a painful truth. However you slice it, it’s denial through-and-through. And of course, it’s not always just someone else. We all have had moments that our “slips” have, well, slipped.

There’s a reason I’m bringing this up.

About a week or so ago, I was reading an article in Buzzfeed. My bad, I don’t remember the article or the writer because, at the time, I didn’t realize I would be writing about it now. So, apologies upfront for the lack of attribution.

Anyway, there was a line written that went something like this:

“By listening to other perspectives (on COVID) you make it seem like there are two sides to this story when there are not.”

My God.

That anyone could say that out loud, let alone put it in print, says everything about what is wrong with the world today. Isn’t the job of a journalist to report the whole story? Is this person truly arrogant and obnoxious enough to believe that there could only be one way to explain the most complex matter of the universe at this time? Does anyone really believe that 100% of people are 100% right 100% of the time? I mean, it's outright lunacy.

Welcome to 2022.

You may be asking yourself what turnip truck I fell off, but really, this is just beyond blatantly offensive and stupid.

So, that was the end of Buzzfeed and me.

A few days later, I saw several headlines about an upcoming protest in DC (and others around the world) scheduled for Sunday, January 23. So that was good. An acknowledgement of people wanting to be heard is a cornerstone of our democracy and embodies the very essence of freedom.

I was also impressed that those initial headlines reported the rally as an anti-mandate protest, taking responsible care not to call it an anti-vax protest. It wasn’t. It was organized around the simple fact that people did not want to be forced to take something, potentially harmful, that they did not want to take. It was essentially the “my body, my choice,” argument, which has been made regarding abortion since the 1970’s. That has never been a radical argument. I don’t know why it is suddenly perceived as such now.

I watched the march, and the hearings that followed, (10 hours total - 5 each). And after listening to everyone - on both sides - my first thought was that the Buzzfeed writer and editor should have been fired by end of business the day the aforementioned article was published.

Those who spoke were not asserting madness, or things like aliens were delivering microchips directly into our bloodstream through vaccines.

Rather, they were doctors who simply do not want the insurance companies and hospitals to forbid them from using medicine that has been shown to work, which they have witnessed firsthand in their own personal practices. Their main argument is that they want early treatment for COVID to be recognized because when you get it early, you prevent more dire outcomes.

That’s it. That’s all they want. (That, and for natural immunity to be recognized.) In fact many of them don’t agree on all the treatments themselves, though they do agree that they can prevent COVID from escalating into a life threatening illness when treated early, because they have already done so.

These doctors point out that there is no other situation in medicine when doctors sit on their hands doing nothing until a patient needs hospitalization. They argue that they know how to treat patients because that’s what good doctors do. They don’t tell patients to go home and wait until their lips turn blue to seek medical help, which at that point is invariably a trip to the emergency room.

It defies logic.

And we all know how big I am on logical thinking.

All these doctors want is to apply best efforts to arrest the infection before it becomes life threatening. They want to do this without interference, often from folks who don’t even actually practice medicine. Yet, by some bizarre and confounding authority, they are being denied “permission” to do so.

For example, Dr. Marik was brought to tears as he tried to explain that he had to “stand by and watch his patients die” because the hospital forbade him from treating his patients the way he deemed appropriate, using his best judgement informed by decades of experience. He is four times board certified and been an ICU doctor for 35 years, yet he was not allowed to implement measures that he believed would help his patients.

Dr. McCullough, who has been published out the wazoo and developed effective treatment protocols to treat COVID, has also treated many, many patients successfully. He too choked back tears when he talked about the significant rise in heart attacks among young boys post-vaccination. As a highly credentialed cardiologist his concern centers around mRNA injections in children/teens. He would rather treat early and resolve the infection naturally to spare the potential risk of any adverse vaccine reactions in kids.

I would argue, as I often do, that this is not an unreasonable position, and these are not fringe loonies we are talking about here.

Then we had victims of vaccine injuries come forward. All they want is for the government to recognize that their lives have been changed, and in some cases ruined, due to an adverse reaction. They are asking for health officials to listen, and help, and ideally offer some guidance. If our agencies are truly interested in public health, this does not seem like an unreasonable ask. And, worth noting, the fact that they exist is the other side of the story.

Finally, there were highly decorated, respected and credentialed scientists with spotless records who want quality, non-biased research that is free of conflict of interest to be considered and recognized as a way to inform our path forward. I would add that since the entire scientific world has always been about asking questions and testing them, this seems like a highly rational line of inquiry worthy of pursuit. That they are being painted as crazy, is well, what’s really crazy.

So, where’s the media on all this?

Absolutely nowhere. Instead they are compulsively reporting campaigns like the one launched to take Joe Rogan off Spotify for having a conversation with two doctors, one of which was Dr. McCollough, and the other was Dr. Malone, whose name appears on papers published in the 1980’s showing his research in developing mRNA technology. (He also spoke at the rally/hearing.) Instead, they promote a letter listing 270 “doctors” who opposed the airing of a point of view different from their own.

All I’m going to say on this is, vet that list. Consider the source. And, oh yeah, vet that list.

In closing, I’d like to share a personal experience. Someone whom I love dearly was hospitalized with COVID. He was given Remdesivir. After day 2 he said he didn’t want to continue. It wasn’t working. He knew something wasn’t right. He could feel it. They said he had no choice. He had to take it for 5 days – against his will.

WTF?

I found this horrifying on an ethical level and heart-wrenching that it happened to somebody I love.

It made no sense. That is, until I found out…

Hospitals are given a bonus for every person placed on a ventilator.

Hospitals are given a bonus for every COVID death, even if the death was not caused by COVID.

Remdesivir costs thousands of times more than other safe and effective drugs that are already on the market and have been used for years. On top of which, there are questions about its safety.

I, for one, am interested in hearing both sides of the story, or three, or four or however many it takes for us to resume normal, healthy lives. So, I’ll close the way comedian, JP Sears opened the rally: "This is about love." Nothing else.

This is about listening and having a conversation. This is about less pain.

Meanwhile, to the Buzzfeed writer, there clearly is more than one side to every story. And to the media overall, “Your slip is hanging.”