Hello!
I’ve just started a six week program with a group of writers on Substack (called Substack Grow) and am learning more about publishing on this platform. I am hoping to apply what I learn so I can continue to use this platform well to share with you all and connect.
So, if you will, please, let me know how you prefer to receive these posts. Right now, I post about once or twice per week with lots of info, but I could send out some short bursts rather than keeping everything in one or two long posts. Or I could do both and you just won’t know what to expect when I pop into your inbox!
But speaking of inboxes, as it turns out, an FDA whistleblower says that there was a report on upcoming baby formula shortages that got lost in the mailroom, otherwise it could’ve been addressed earlier. Oops. But that doesn’t really surprise anyone because a quarter of federal health workers failed to check their email during the pandemic.
I ought to take another poll: can I say “during the pandemic” like it’s past tense yet?
Because aren’t we onto the next pandemic? Isn’t it monkeypox’s time to shine? I mean, we’re getting really great recommendations from the CDC: like having sex with your clothes on or socially distant masturbating. I am not kidding. Read their recommendations yourself.
And the WHO IHR (which wasn’t updated this year, but you MUST NOT FORGET ABOUT IT) has recommendations regarding monkeypox as well:
That is why it is urgent that all Member States, communities and individuals take the recommendations of the committee for stepped-up surveillance, improved diagnostics community engagement and risk communication, and the appropriate use of therapeutics, vaccines, and public health measures including contact tracing and isolation.
Having sex with your clothes on counts as both risk communication and isolation, right?
But my favorite part of that little blurb is the increased surveillance. Is there really not enough of that yet?! Contact tracing is a thing again? Really??
I suppose the overlap between monkeypox and covid is to be expected, especially if you consider this Substack post from Unacceptable Jessica regarding the uptick of skin lesions that look an awful lot like shingles reactivation after getting a covid shot but are reported as monkeypox outbreaks. I agree with what she suggests and wanted to share it with you.
Here is what I would recommend for upcoming times:
let your child live COVID-19 shot-less
if you need a doctor in your life, SHOP AROUND
read a lot - it’s your life and it matters what you do
be intelligently diligent and diligently intelligent about educating yourself
use your common sense
wash your damned hands with hot water and soap when you get home after being out
wash you hands before you eat
maintain those vitamin D levels at non-deficient levels (optimal = 30 to 100 ng/mL)¹
get plenty of exercise
get plenty of sunshine (or light)
sleep, sleep, sleep
turn off the damned television
prescribe yourself at least 3 hours a day WITHOUT ANY DEVICES near you (and yes that includes your smart phone - you’ll survive)
From just a facts perspective regarding her first recommendation, The Epoch Times offers some facts about kids' covid shots since the youngest of our children are now eligible to be vaccinated against a strain of a coronavirus from 2019. Read the whole thing, but here’s an important snippet:
Efficacy against infection was measured as a secondary endpoint. The efficacy of Moderna’s vaccine was substandard, or under 50 percent, and the efficacy of Pfizer’s vaccine was unreliable.
Both the immunobridging analyses and the efficacy estimates were drawn from small numbers of trial volunteers.
And you can learn more valuable info from Dr. Clare Craig in these short videos:
Both of those videos are short. Please watch them. You’ll learn things like 2/3 of children participating in the trials didn’t make it to the end of the trial. Why? We don’t know. There is a lot we don’t know.
But it certainly seems to me that the shots for kids are not worth it. And the shots for adults? Well, we’re still playing out this massive clinical trial. I’m sharing another Substack from Jessica Rose because it’s worth reading:
Here’s an image from her post in case you don’t click to read it or if you just like pretty graphics:
I imagine that by this time next year, these things will belong under the following section of my newsletter, which I think may become a mainstay:
Things That Were Previously Considered Conspiracy Theories, But Are Now Just Common Knowledge
In today’s episode of things that were considered conspiracy theories until they suddenly made it into mainstream conversation, I’d like to point you to this “Science in 5” episode from the WHO.
Two notable quotes from the interview with Soumya Swaminathan: {SO-me-uh SO-me-NOTH-an}
“We have used genome sequencing from the beginning.”
“We’re at risk of flying blind if we do not keep up the testing and surveillance.”
Again with the testing and surveillance. I cannot eye roll hard enough.
Remember how they weren’t taking your genetic material with covid tests? (Except they were and I told you about it last September?) Well now it’s just common knowledge that they’ve been obtaining your genetic material, and of course that’s what you consented to when you stuck that swab up your nose. (Click the image below to see a video of my discovery of this in September 2021. Paid subscribers, you have access to the article I wrote accompanying this post - linked at the bottom of this email.)
In continuing with this section of previous conspiracy theories, the CDC was aware of 9 deaths as a result of blood clotting from the J&J shot two weeks before they made that information public.
Perhaps you’ll remember that they paused the J&J shots in April of last year, citing clotting concerns; but shots resumed (even though three people had died as a result of TTS (thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, a condition that features low platelet levels combined with blood clots) after receiving a J&J shot).
Six more people died of TTS, but we heard nothing. Two weeks after the ninth person died with confirmed TTS following the J&J shot CDC advisers, endorsed by Rachelle Walensky, stated in a virtual meeting to the public in December that the J&J shot was not “preferred.” The FDA didn’t restrict the use of the J&J shot until last month.
The adverse events themselves used to be conspiracy theories because the shots are all safe and effective, obviously, but now we find out that not only did the CDC know that the shots were directly related to deaths, they hid this information from the public.
Maybe they were still hanging onto hope (while simultaneously screaming to follow the science) that the shots would work great without killing people. But I don’t care how you spin it, hoping for a result is not the same as failing to share information with the public or confidently telling them that something works.
I just checked the thesaurus and hope and science are not synonyms. Weird. Last year’s mantra should’ve been #followthehope, eh?
Finally, I want to address the ruling from SCOTUS on Friday. From The Epoch Times, quoting the majority (6-3) opinion to uphold a Mississippi law (and 5-4 vote that overturned Roe) written by Justice Alito:
“Abortion presents a profound moral issue on which Americans hold sharply conflicting views,” he wrote.
“Some believe fervently that a human person comes into being at conception and that abortion ends an innocent life. Others feel just as strongly that any regulation of abortion invades a woman’s right to control her own body and prevents women from achieving full equality.
“Still others in a third group think that abortion should be allowed under some but not all circumstances, and those within this group hold a variety of views about the particular restrictions that should be imposed.”
For the first 185 years after the U.S. Constitution was adopted, “each state was permitted to address this issue in accordance with the views of its citizens,” but then, in 1973, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. Despite the fact that the Constitution doesn’t mention abortion, the court found that “it confers a broad right to obtain one.”
The court made no claim “that American law or the common law had ever recognized such a right, and its survey of history ranged from the constitutionally irrelevant (e.g., its discussion of abortion in antiquity) to the plainly incorrect (e.g., its assertion that abortion was probably never a crime under the common law),” Alito wrote.
“After cataloging a wealth of other information having no bearing on the meaning of the Constitution, the opinion concluded with a numbered set of rules much like those that might be found in a statute enacted by a legislature.”
The court created a scheme in which “each trimester of pregnancy was regulated differently, but the most critical line was drawn at roughly the end of the second trimester, which, at the time, corresponded to the point at which a fetus was thought to achieve ‘viability,’ i.e., the ability to survive outside the womb.”
Even though the court acknowledged that states “had a legitimate interest in protecting ‘potential life,’” Alito wrote, it determined that this interest didn’t justify imposing any restrictions on abortions in the pre-viability stage.
The court offered no explanation for this finding, which even abortion supporters have been hard-pressed to defend.
The three dissenting Justices (Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan), stated in their joint dissenting opinion:
“It says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A state can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs,” the justices wrote.
“An abortion restriction, the majority holds, is permissible whenever rational, the lowest level of scrutiny known to the law.
“And because, as the court has often stated, protecting fetal life is rational, states will feel free to enact all manner of restrictions.”
It seems to me that the lack of personal autonomy in the past year is what led to this. The erosion of personal choice is the erosion of personal choice. Reminder that this now means that abortion is a state-specific issue rather than a federal one, as we talked about after the draft was leaked last month. And reminder that there is humanity on both sides of the issue.
Podcast Recs
This one was HUGE for me. First of all, I’ve been on a water journey for years now. I structure my water after filtering it, and have an incredible new water filter at the office (which I’m still waiting to get hooked up!) that’s alkaline, hyperoxygenated, and structured. It’s the Ferrarri of water filters. And my own personal consumption of only saltwater or herbal infusions adds another layer of complexity to this water journey.
And yet, this podcast completely blew me away and I’m so grateful to my friend Sam for sharing it with me:
After you listen to the podcast, be sure to check out Veda Austin’s work here.
I was on the Gestalt Education podcast again; this time with Dr. Erica Boland after our last moveMentors Perinatal Manual Care course. If you want to hear our conversation about recent tattoos, pelvic floors, and prenatal/postpartum care, check it out:
I also was just recently a guest on the Eat for Life podcast with Sam Gilbert. That conversation hasn’t been released yet, but I listened to a few of her podcasts and found them very insightful and valuable (the ones regarding breast implant illness and concussion were great!). Check out her work and her podcast here.
More for paid subscribers below (a newsletter I wrote in Sept 2021 when I discovered about genomic sequencing). For everyone, please vote in the poll above and we’ll talk soon!
Peace & love,
L
