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Pandemic Could Be Solved Quickly If Politics Thrown Out: Dr. Ben Carson
“We’ve been having tunnel vision” dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Ben Carson told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program.
“Let’s throw the politics out. We could solve this problem pretty quickly,” he stated in an interview that will premiere on Dec. 18 at 7 p.m. New York time.
“Let’s open this thing up to all the different mechanisms,” said Carson, a renowned neurosurgeon who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the highest civilian award in the nation—in 2008 for his work. He retired in 2013 and ran for the presidency in 2016, before serving as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Trump administration.
“Let’s look around the world at things that work. Let’s look at the fact that on the western coast of Africa, there’s almost no COVID. And let’s ask ourselves, why is that? And then you see, it’s because they take antimalarials, particularly hydroxychloroquine. Let’s study that. Let’s see what’s going on there.
“Let’s listen to these physician groups who’ve had incredible success with ivermectin. Let’s look at the results with monoclonal antibodies. Let’s look at all of these things. Let’s put them all in our armamentarium so that we don’t have a one-size-fits-all system.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) at one time had authorized hydroxychloroquine for treating certain COVID-19 patients but quickly revoked the emergency use authorization (EUA) in June 2020, claiming no data showed its effectiveness.
The FDA hasn’t approved or issued an EUA for ivermectin to treat COVID-19, citing the same reasons.
Using hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients has been highly controversial. Some studies show, and some doctors claim, that hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin can effectively treat COVID-19 patients. A vaccine confidence insight report (pdf) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) labeled such claims as misinformation or disinformation.
“COVID is a virus. Viruses mutate. That’s what they do. And they will continue to mutate,” Carson said.
Carson pointed out that fortunately, most of the time, viruses become a little weaker with each mutation.
“We can admit that and deal with it, or we can take every little mutation and every little change and try to make it into a crisis so we can frighten people and control their lives more,” Carson said.
The latest variant has been named Omicron. During a White House COVID-19 Task Force briefing on Dec. 15, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said that she expected Omicron cases to increase in the coming weeks, urging people to take preventive measures such as being vaccinated and getting booster doses.
Carson said he has some concerns with how COVID-19 is being utilized to “manipulate and frighten people.”
“We should be using every tool available to us to fight the pandemic. There’s no question about that,” Carson said.
“But that means, you know, therapeutics, which had been poo-pooed. And I understand why. Because in order to get an EUA—an emergency use authorization—to pursue the vaccines, you can’t have anything that’s effective as an alternative. So, that’s a defect in our system, we need to get rid of that.
“I think a lot of people died unnecessarily because we had that attitude,” Carson added. He shared that when he contracted the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus and was severely ill, monoclonal antibodies saved his life. He said monoclonal antibodies weren’t really utilized the way they should have been early on.
The FDA issued its first EUA for monoclonal antibodies to treat COVID-19 patients in November 2020.
“There are many things that have been very effective that we have not pursued, including natural immunity,” Carson said.
“Well, why wouldn’t you collect that information? Why wouldn’t you want to know that? The only reason you wouldn’t do that is because you didn’t want to know the answer,” he said. “Because it didn’t fit very neatly into what you’re trying to do, which is get everybody to be vaccinated.”
That’s one of the reasons people are losing confidence in federal health agencies, he suggested.
Last month, the CDC said it had no record of naturally immune people transmitting the CCP virus.
“A lot of people who probably should be vaccinated are not doing it because they see these inconsistencies, these things that make absolutely no sense,” Carson said. “This demand that everybody get a vaccination, except if you’re coming across the southern border illegally, then it’s not all that important.”
Carson also opposes forcing children to be vaccinated.
“We have a situation where you have the government advocating that children be vaccinated, even though the risk for death for a child with COVID is 0.025 percent, essentially the same as it is for seasonal flu. You don’t see us doing all this every year for seasonal flu,” Carson stated.
“The risk of mortality for a healthy child is approaching zero, and yet we’re saying do this without knowing what the long-term risks are?” he said.
“And why would you subject an innocent child to a lifetime of unknown risk? It just makes absolutely no sense.
“We need to have faith in our government. We need to have faith in our health care systems. And by injecting politics into it, I think we have put ourselves behind the eight ball. It’s going to take a while to reestablish that trust,” he said.
“Why not learn how to look at what’s logical and what makes sense? And why not encourage discussion of those things, rather than everybody getting their respective corners and shooting hand grenades at each other?”
The way out is real leadership, he said.
“The only path is strong leadership. We don’t have that.”
I'll say what Dr. Carson shied away from saying: There's money to be made with the vax, and mandatory vaxxes. I mean, he said as much, but he wasn't blunt enough. The half million dead Americans blamed on Trump, are more properly blamed on Fauci and associates.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 19 2021, @11:52AM (15 children)
The "pandemic" will continue as long as testing does, or the virus mutates to show up negative. So far it doesn't seem testing is applying much selective pressure though.
It is time for people to ignore every authority that ever mentioned herd immunity, because that alone is enough to prove they have no clue wtf they are talking about.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 19 2021, @01:53PM (9 children)
Don't be stupid. Omicron is significantly less dangerous. It's what we've been waiting for and expecting - a virus as unstable as covid is going to eventually pop a mutation that is lmfar less deadly. And that will displace delta. Problem is, that will take a tear or so.
Testing doesn't produce selection pressure - especially the shitty lateral flow tests with their high false negative rates.
The only path forward for the virus is to mutate further into an even less impactful strain. This was always going to be the inevitable end game. Same as the other 4 coronavirus that only cause colds in humans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 19 2021, @03:27PM (3 children)
This is what we hope will happen because omicron is more transmissible. It has to be noted that delta was already in decline in South Africa, there's no guarantee that pattern repeats elsewhere.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 19 2021, @09:23PM (2 children)
We now know it was bubbling along under the surface undetected for some time before the first case was reported. So it is certainly less deadly, or it would have been picked up sooner.
Heck, for many people the omicron infection isn't even as bad as the side effects of the vaccines - and we've been expecting this as the virus does it's random walk through mutations, some of which will make it cause less overt illness.
One of the reasons it's so effective at spreading is the symptoms don't match the previous variants, so people can walk around spreading it without alarming others. After all, if there are two people, one coughing, and one with a mild headache, on opposite sides of a room, you're going to move away from the cougher and towards the person ith the headache. Same as animals actively withdraw from members of the herd with obvious sickness. It's instinctive, reinforced by generations of natural selection that killed off the ones that didn't stay away from the sick.
We will never be able to vaccinate our way out of this, though it's a great stopgap measure. We're paying the price for over a century of unsafe, unsanitary, and cruel livestock handling with over a century of viruses crossing over from livestock to humans. Because every action has a reaction, every cause has multiple effects.
Plant-based meat substitutes and vat-grown meat can't come soon enough.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 19 2021, @11:47PM (1 child)
If you think that the last century or two were highlights of cruelty and unsanitary meat handling, holy moly do I have news for you. Old school agricultural practices are, and were, nightmarish compared to even CAFOs, let alone modern ranching operations. Never mind the inefficient slaughter methods, veterinary science was pretty much on the level of quack medicine and black magic. If you're trying to point the finger at Wuhan's wet markets, please understand that practices there are largely illegal in most of the west.
Meat substitutes won't solve the problems that we have, but will introduce a whole mess of new problems. But I suppose it's better than praying to Freya for a bountiful harvest.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 20 2021, @02:52PM
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 19 2021, @04:35PM (4 children)
Omicron is more transmissible, but 1/10 as fatal. Seems like we're heading in the right direction, unless you are rooting for a whipped, docile, malleable population, a powerful central government.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 20 2021, @02:58PM (3 children)
You are making the classic mistake of "big numbers". It might be 1/10th as fatal, but if it is 20x more transmissible, and infects 20x more people, then 2x as many people will die in the end, even if it is 1/10th as fatal.
The big worry with the Omicron Persei 8 variant is that we don't yet know, for sure, just how much more transmissible it will be, so we don't yet know how many will need to be in an ICU because of it, even if it is 1/10th as fatal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 20 2021, @04:17PM
Assuming it's 20x as transmissible, which doesn't seem likely, since that's more dependent on the actions of people than viri. You can always hope it gets worse, but it doesn't look that way. Hospitalization numbers still look better under this season's model, depending on who's stirring 'em. We're certainly over the hump... big camel, though. Eye-of-the-needle references notwithstanding.
Somebody finally did the Futurama reference! If women are from Omicron Persei 7, and men are from Omicron Persei 9,
we still have the Smizmar issue.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 20 2021, @09:00PM (1 child)
Overall Gauteng hospitalizations peaked at 47% of their Delta wave, deaths at 8%. Their CFR for Delta was 3%, estimates for Omicron are 0.16%. Average hospital stay was 8.5 days for Delta and 2.8 days for Omicron.
It's also beginning to look like the generation interval is reduced from around 5 days with Delta to around 3.5 with Omicron, suggesting control measures may be quicker and more effective at preventing spread. This would also mean the current R estimate should be revised downwards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 23 2021, @04:46AM
That's a troll post? It's certainly a refreshing note that sanity might just return, and whatever the "new normal" is, it will be livable. And maybe we will learn to appreciate the beauty of our nation and our heritage, again. Unfortunately this type of information will have to continue to be denied and buried until after the second Tuesday in next November.
(Score: 5, Touché) by DannyB on Monday December 20 2021, @03:35PM (4 children)
Population growth will continue as long as we do pregnancy testing.
Stop all pregnancy tests! This will reduce the population!
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 20 2021, @07:13PM
4 billion people took the vaccine, why would they do that if it didn't work?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 20 2021, @09:27PM (2 children)
Why not mandatory abortions?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 21 2021, @05:04PM (1 child)
Stopping pregnancy testing is less controversial. You can convince people to avoid the expense of a pregnancy test. Especially if you tell them that the pregnancy test is what causes pregnancy. And people, at least in the US, will believe it!
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 22 2021, @05:22AM
But then you get less delicious, delicious byproducts. *ahem* I mean materials for research.