There seem to be few normal doctors around anymore. Try to have an appointment with many doctors over the last few months and they will demand that you put a mask over your nose and mouth — supposedly to block coronavirus transmission. You’d think, given they are doctors, they would know that there are health risks from you doing so and that it is not established that you doing so provides any net protection against coronavirus. Yet, they demand away. This is abnormal behavior.
Then, check out the big money news organizations and pretty soon you are likely to read or hear from one of the go-to doctors hectoring people to wear masks and “social distance” to protect against coronavirus. As with masks, the benefit of “social distancing” is not established. Further, for most people coronavirus poses little risk of death or even serious sickness. Many people, including some people who believe they have high risks related to coronavirus, would rationally choose to risk having coronavirus by proceeding with their lives unimpeded by mask wearing, “social distancing,” limiting activities to only those that are “essential,” closing their businesses, losing their jobs, and whatever other burdens abnormal doctors advise.
Luckily, there are still some doctors who reject the abnormal “new normal” with its dour manifestations including isolation, closed or tightly restricted businesses, and day-to-day mask wearing.
I saw a photograph of seven apparently still normal doctors earlier this week. There they were, standing shoulder to shoulder and maskless. The photograph appeared in a Sunday Twitter post by Simone Gold, the founder of America’s Frontline Doctors. Gold wrote in the tweet about Gold and the other doctors in the photo visiting the United States government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):
BREAKING: America’s Frontline Doctors are at the CDC in Atlanta to protest against forcing millions of Americans to take an experimental vaccine for Covid-19, a pathogen with a survival rate of 99.7%.
We will fight against any experimental therapy being forced on anyone.
It is refreshing to see doctors challenge such abnormalcy run amuck.
America’s Frontline Doctors has provided in a position paper an interesting in-depth analysis explaining concerns about the government-backed effort to vaccinate Americans with experimental coronavirus vaccines. You can read that position paper here.
In contrast to abnormal doctors who are pretty much saying through government and media communications “come on in, the water is warm” regarding the vaccination effort, America’s Frontline Doctors provides a more normal doctor’s recommendation. The group describes potential risks and benefits of taking the experimental vaccines and provides guidance that is targeted to the different situations of different people instead of generalized for everyone. In its position paper, America’s Frontline Doctors writes:
XII. AFLDS Recommendations Regarding COVID-19 Experimental Vaccines Prohibited for the young, Discouraged for the healthy middle-aged and Optional for the co-morbid and elderly. There is no evidence that vaccines should be racially prioritized.
a. 0-20: prohibited (exceedingly low risk from COVID, unknown risk of auto-immune disease, unknown risk of pathogenic priming, risk of lifelong infertility)
b. 20-50 healthy: strongly discouraged (exceedingly low risk from COVID, unknown risk of auto-immune disease, unknown risk of pathogenic priming, risk of lifelong infertility)
c. 50-69 & healthy: strongly discouraged (low risk from COVID, unknown risk of auto-immune disease, unknown risk of pathogenic priming, unknown effect on placenta and spermatogenesis)
d. 50-69 & co-morbid: discouraged (experimental vaccine is higher risk than early or prophylactic treatment with established medications)
e. >70 & healthy: personal risk assessment (experimental vaccine is higher risk than early or prophylactic treatment with established medications)
f. >70 & co-morbid: personal risk assessment & advocacy access (experimental vaccine early or prophylactic treatment with established medications)
Are these the definitive recommendations regarding taking experimental coronavirus vaccines? Likely not. There may be valid reasons to disagree with the recommendations here and there. There may be some people whose circumstances make them exceptions from the categories of people listed in the recommendations. More information may come out over time that should be used in considering whether or not certain people should take the experimental vaccines. However, the cautious and nuanced approach of America’s Frontline Doctors in regard to this important medical decision for individuals is definitely more normal than the approach of doctors and other people pushing for the maximum number of people to take the experimental vaccines as soon as possible.
