Experts — Judgement — Wisdom

Over the weekend it was reported on Medscape that Minnesota Republican Gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen was once again being investigated by the Minnesota State Board of Medicine because of his politically incorrect and contrarian though well supported positions regarding Covid mitigation policy. Dr. Jensen is a family practitioner with many years of experience, certainly many more years of treating patients than Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, or many of the “experts” at the NIH. Dr. Jensen is entitled to his personal and professional opinions. Like Galileo and Copernicus who all the experts including Pope Urban felt were wrong regarding their heliocentric theory of planetary motion, truth today promulgated by experts may tomorrow prove to be false. People like Dr. Fauci, experts in the public health community and medical professionals including clinicians have had different opinions regarding mitigation and treatment strategies for Covid which is to be expected.

There is no such thing as settled science. The biggest mistake many of our political leaders made was to allow the risk tolerance of their advisers to be more important than the risk tolerance of individuals, families, businesses, churches and schools. I have been a big fan of Dr. Hahn during the entire pandemic. In her role as advisor and on the Governor’s Covid Committee she has done a great job of informing and giving technical advice to the Governor and the members of “The Committee”. The members that the Governor chose to advise him preordained his making unwise decisions. One of them was the former CEO at Luke’s who made $18 million his last two years on the job—I almost wrote “in service to his community” but anyone making that kind of money in Boise Idaho as head of a “non-profit” is serving only themselves. The other member that I had problems with was the current CEO of the Idaho Hospital Association. Making judgements about our Governor’s continuance of an Emergency Order or continuing to comply with Federal Emergency Orders when reimbursements to the organizations they work for or represent are impacted by their decisions on the Board, is more than problematic. By implementing State and Federal Emergency orders, they leave the door wide open to suspicions of cronyism and corruption… The regulated and regulator are one and the same! Why not have a practicing family practitioner on the committee and an ICU Nurse?

This article is a preamble to the articles that will follow. Let me say that I too have been wrong about some of my positions. From the beginning I felt that the only mask that would work was the N-95—right on that one according to Dr. Fauci last month… I argued for reverse isolation techniques (type 3 isolation) instead of “en masse” type 2 mitigation. I believed in certain situations chemical mitigation (many called it vaccination) was appropriate especially for the elderly and high-risk population. My family have been all “vaxed and boosted” to protect my daughter in law who had chemotherapy and a splenectomy for diffuse histiocytic lymphoma in the middle of the pandemic. I believed and still do that natural vaccination is far better than chemical sensitization (some called it vaccination). . 70% of people who died from Covid were over the age of 70. Seventy percent of the rest who died had preexisting conditions. Children under the age of 5(morbidity and mortality) were less affected by Covid than from seasonal flue. Of the almost 5000 people in Idaho who died from Covid only 2 were under the age of 18. Obesity and urban living conditions were risk factors and still are for any communicable disease and are not being talked about. Before and after this pandemic we can continue to say that in the 15,000-year history of modern man our ability to control and contain an air borne upper respiratory tract virus has still proven to be impossible. Controlling one’s own individual health and risk factors should be the primary goal of doctors and patients and not public health experts. The doctor patient relationship has suffered great harm because of the intervention of government bureaucrats and hospital administrators. The reputation of our health care delivery system has suffered greatly. Already out briefs, after-action reports and morbidity and mortality reviews are being politicized to protect the political operatives.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9062939/

In the article cited above from The National Library of Science and written by Dr. Russell L. Blaylock the first two paragraphs read as follows:

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most manipulated infectious disease events in history, characterized by official lies in an unending stream lead by government bureaucracies, medical associations, medical boards, the media, and international agencies.[3,6,57] We have witnessed a long list of unprecedented intrusions into medical practice. This includes attacks on medical experts, destruction of medical careers among doctors refusing to participate in killing their patients and a massive regimentation of health care, led by non-qualified individuals with enormous wealth, power and influence.

For the first time in American history a president, governors, mayors, hospital administrators and federal bureaucrats are determining medical treatments that are not based on accurate scientific information. Instead they forced the acceptance of special forms of care and “prevention”—including remdesivir, use of respirators and ultimately a series of essentially untested messenger RNA vaccines. For the first time in history medical treatment, protocols are not being formulated based on the experience of the physicians treating the largest number of patients successfully. Instead they used protocols from individuals and bureaucracies that have never treated a single patient—including Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, EcoHealth Alliance, the CDC, WHO, state public health officers and hospital administrators. [23,38]

I would like to add that the Federalization of our Medical system that was accelerated by the Affordable Care ACT (ACA) and then laws and executive orders promulgated in response to Covid, demonstrated how a command-and-control top-down socialized medical system failed patients throughout our entire country. When the Governor of New York decides that nursing home patients with Covid can return to nursing homes where they reinfected other patients and staff, a doctor had to sign the discharge and accepting orders. The Governor’s order superseded the physicians’ orders in both cases. This was serious act of mass malpractice if you ask me, except the politicians, bureaucrats and medical association’s legislated immunity for those responsible.

In the upcoming articles I would like to contrast the way Governor DeSantis proceeded during the pandemic, and how Governor Little and his team responded. Governor DeSantis surrounded himself with people that had differing opinions. The structure of the Florida Department of Health and Welfare {DHW) is very different than Idaho’s. The influence that special interests had over critical decisions during the pandemic was very different in Florida than what we witnessed in Idaho. A political narrative was established by trade organizations and their lobbyists early on in Idaho, and a willing media failed to ask important questions. The Idaho response was more like what we saw with the Federal Government and in New York State. The response in States like Florida, Texas, and South Dakota needs to be reviewed.

In the end Governor Little acted like a manager and Governors DeSantis, Abbott, and Noam acted like leaders. Instead of inviting contrarian points of view, he chose to follow a self-serving narrative orchestrated by the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry (IACI), The Idaho Medical Association (IMA) and The Idaho Hospital Association (IHA). Personal attacks on accomplished physician experts with impeccable clinical and academic bona credentials were led by “experts” who have done had little or no medical experience like Jim Jones, Chris Roth, and David Pate Esq. MD were commonplace.

The most dangerous experts are those who venture outside their own field. I once knew a neurosurgeon who thought he was an expert enough mechanic to work on his own Mercedes. He wasn’t wise enough to know what he didn’t know. He ended up buying a new BMW. He claimed Mercedes Engineers were morons. Sounds like Pope Urban and the experts that placed Galileo under house arrest. At least in Idaho our State Board of Medicine (SBOM) has followed wise legal counsel and not capitulated to a political narrative regurgitated by “experts” and the press. For those people outside and inside the medical profession who tried to leverage the (SBOM) like what is being done in Minnesota for political purposes—shame on you.

After all the out briefs I believe we will be able to say that we have listened to too many “experts” who aren’t experts. We have allowed people to judge for us what our own tolerance to risk should be, and we have not been wise enough to respect the individual to make decisions for themselves and their families that are in their own self (not selfish— there is a difference) interest.