The BizNews community is an opinionated lot, as my inbox attests. They’re also pretty smart so I take every email seriously. Here’s one that arrived yesterday from lawyer Anton Friedman who asserts:
Black market cigarettes were a planned strategy. More than a decade ago they started travelling on the black market underground quite freely. The intention was to start there (in a crumbling state situation). Then alcohol (see Cyril’s nonsensical covid alcohol restrictions). Medicine and food were planned for later when travel/trucking is less secure and more expensive and supply chains are less reliable.
Street vendors are winning slowly as they saw it coming…it’s the foundation of their businesses. They do this by hijacking trucks sent to hoarding sites. They would be out of business otherwise. They can’t get cigarettes otherwise. The SA black market model is not on the street….it’s via indoor taverns, shebeens, restaurants, taxi ranks.
The culture of the street vendors is old and essential in South Africa, it feeds many hungry children in the townships. If we assist the street vendors by supporting them, the black market plans will crumble, we’ll be more secure and our supply chains will be safer. Black children in townships will be less hungry.
The cigarettes may be illegal, but don’t turn your back on the vendors for reasons of ethics. The ethics go the other way. Watch coronavirus though !!!!!
Another attorney, Capetonian Robert Bloomberg, is one of many correspondents who regularly send through their insights on the pandemic. His wife is in the medical field and shared the follow-up video from Dr Shankara Chetty, the GP in rural Port Edward whose successes in fighting Covid-19 have brought him much attention. Here’s the link: https://youtu.be/OciYTW_BIEs.
For his part, Robert takes issue with yesterday’s contribution from Dr Liz Hart:
I couldn’t disagree more with Dr Hart. Time will prove that her belief that “vaccinations have been shown to be safe, albeit with a small percentage of complications” and that “Ivermectin is certainly not a prophylactic” is misguided and untrue. I know numerous people, including myself, who have taken Ivermectin as a prophylactic and not one has tested positive to Covid.
As an aside, my dentist who had his first shot (I will refrain from mentioning the type) developed full-blown Covid and was admitted to ICU in critical condition. The photo of him at that stage was not a pretty sight. 4 days later, the follow-up picture looked like a makeover. He credits the pulmonologist in stating that “he saved my life.” He was given 4 days of 12mg Ivermectin, in addition to prednisone (very important), zinc, vitamin C and 5000 units of vitamin D (anyone who can afford this and doesn’t take this should ask themselves why) and also heparin to stop blood clots. 6 days after being at death’s door he was discharged. He says there is no chance he will have the second vaccination.
I also know a family of nine who had a different shot that I also won’t disclose, who all developed Covid after and the grandfather is now on life support.
So, to each their own. The two things one never wants to discuss is religion and politics as it only leads to arguments and disagreement. You can now add a third in vaccinations.
Another supporter of Ivermectin is Vishnu Naidoo who writes: I can also confirm a cousin of mine was on deathbed in hospital and Ivermectin saved his life.
But for every supporter nowadays there seems to be a counter. So I really appreciated this comprehensive missive from Mark Lawrie with sufficient references to keep both sides gainfully occupied. Mark writes:
Well done on your piece on Ivermectin in your ‘inbox’ 6 July. Spot on. Just to advise you (if you don’t already know) that the “Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19 Infection: A Systematic Review, Meta-analysis, and Trial Sequential Analysis to Inform Clinical Guidelines” by Bryant, Lawrie et al has now finally been published in the American Journal of Therapeutics. This study was peer-reviewed and accepted for publication by the Lancet Respiratory and then spiked – for reasons we now well know. Finally a home was found for it in a good journal. The study analysed 24 RCTs involving 3406 participants. The conclusion clearly favoured ivermectin in all stages of infection and in prophylaxis.[https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/Fulltext/2021/08000/Ivermectin_for_Prevention_and_Treatment_of.7.aspx]
You might be interested in this: This study is causing quite a stir as it is very rigorous and uses Cochrane and WHO standards of methodology. It can’t be faulted. But, as in you’re tobacco industry analogy, ‘they’ published (accepted for publication) a bogus study [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.21.21257595v2] in the Oxford Scientific’s Clinical Infectious Diseases – with an almost identical name. Many doctors have signed a letter of retraction to the journal. [https://bird-group.org/letter-to-editor-of-journal-requesting-retraction-of-roman-et-al-meta-analysis/].
This study is simply disgraceful and has so many errors it verges on farcical – swapped data, conclusions not supported by evidence shown, misinterpretation, cherry-picking a small subset of trials, omissions of significant data etc – really desperate stuff. But in publishing this substandard tosh it does also reflect exactly how these journals are merely mouthpieces for pharma co.
And this is not the first, there’s the scandal of Dr Hill’s meta-analysis’ conclusion being written by the trial sponsor UNITAID, and now about to be published with a brand new set of authors but still maintaining the unsupported conclusion. There is the JAMA study by Lopez-Medina, (www.jamaletter.com) a set up to fail trial and appalling piece of work which, despite being internationally discredited, is still quoted by the WHO and most public health bodies as evidence against Ivermectin. But that was exactly the intention. This is the Lancet-Hydroxychloroquine phenomena again; once published – damage done – retraction immaterial.
Now a new one appears; the Vallejos trial out of Argentina – which has a series of serious limitations. The Vallejos study appears to be nearly identical to the Lopez-Medina study in that they included young patients with mild disease, started treatment late and at a low dose in an area with rampant Ivermectin use – note that 12,356 patients of the 22,533 patents screened were excluded for having taken ivermectin within 7 days. Despite these very strong limitations, they still found a large reduction in the need for hospitalization although it did not meet statistical significance due to so few events being observed, because the placebo arm was riddled with Ivermectin takers. There was no conflict of interests disclosure either. A very poor trial but now highly cited.
So now there are various studies to cite as proof that IVM doesn’t work. It doesn’t seem to matter that they are all flawed science. As long as they are published the damage is done. How sad for humanity.
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