FSM News and Articles
Health experts say COVID-19 swab tests are safe and do not damage the blood-brain barrier: The claim is misleading, according to experts. According to Immunologist and FSM Consultant, Emeritus Professor John Dwyer, “The swab is not placed on the blood brain barrier and does not compromise the blood brain barrier and thus does not pose any threat to our nervous system. While the PCR test can be “momentarily unpleasant,” there is “no way that a simple swab could damage the blood brain barrier.”
FSM Friends’ News and Articles
Flying safely during COVID-19 – Tips from a public health researcher: The coronavirus spread quickly from China to other parts of the world late last year through travellers, and ensuring we don’t make the same mistake again is crucial. This article contains useful tips for people flying during the pandemic.
General
Leader of fake church peddling bleach as COVID-19 cure sought Trump’s support. Instead, he got federal charges: The “Genesis II Church of Health and Healing” has been charged over the sale of Miracle Mineral Solution (aka diluted bleach), which has seen a 400% increase in sales during the COVID-19 pandemic. These were bolstered by Trump’s famed musings in an April press conference on whether ‘cleaning’ out the body with bleach could be useful in protecting against COVID-19 – though there is no indication that Trump was referring to MMS, or if he had even heard of MMS as a COVID-19 treatment. The group were selling MMS years prior to COVID-19, and it is claimed they created the “Church” to protect sale of the solution as a religious freedom and avoid regulation
FALSE – FDA approves Chinese medicine for treating COVID-19: The FDA has not approved Lianhua Qingwen Jiaonang for treating COVID-19. On the contrary, it warned the public on May 6 against purchasing and using the product. Their advisory said that the product was not registered with the FDA so they cannot guarantee its quality and safety. “The consumption of such violative product may pose potential danger or injury if administered,” they said. They advised the public not to purchase the product, to be vigilant against it, and to always check if a drug product is registered with the FDA before buying it.
Hidden Health Professions
Hospital Dietitians. Hospital dietetics – intensive care and parenteral nutrition: From meal planning with malnourished patients, through to devising the necessary nutrient ratios for very unwell patients requiring intravenous nutrition, hospital dietitians are an important part of our healthcare system.
Today’s Abused Health Concept
Claims that COVID-19 cases are over reported. Tracking COVID-19 excess deaths across countries – (AKA a chance to nerd out with charts comparing government COVID-19 reporting to background death rates): We’ve all had that friend or family member. They disagree with restrictions. They claim that it’s all a lie. They don’t want to wear a mask. And they claim that the stats are inflated by recording un-evidenced cases as ‘Death by COVID-19’. On the other hand there is significant evidence that reported death rates represent a massive UNDERESTIMATE of the COVID-19 death rate, due to many people who were not tested, or died without receiving care, as well as many other confounding factors.
“One way to account for these methodological problems is to use a simpler measure, known as “excess deaths”: take the number of people who die from any cause in a given region and period…The table below shows that, in most places, the number of excess deaths is greater than the number of COVID-19 fatalities officially recorded by governments in the same period. However, the most recent weeks of excess-mortality data in America should be interpreted cautiously. Some states take at least a month to process death certificates, which means that the initial numbers they publish for a given week are substantial undercounts, creating the false impression of “negative” excess deaths. Among the places where we have found recent data on excess deaths, the biggest spike has been in Moscow—which recorded 11,100 more fatalities than usual between April and June, compared with an official COVID-19 toll of 3,800.”
(These data should be considering interesting, but should be interpreted with caution due to the complexity of factors that may affect the data. It should not be taken as a replacement for the expert government estimates, however conservative they are.)