Sri Lanka crisis: Daily heartbreak of life in a country gone bankrupt - BBC News

 I usually do not look much at the BBC but to know what the propaganda theme of the day is. But there are exceptions. This article on Sri Lanka is one.

 The country racked by civil war and mismanagement / graft, never was at the top of the developing league and it was therefore predictable that it would be at the forefront of the current crisis. But what is amazing is how violent the tumble has been. It is, I think, a valid lesson of what will happen to other similar countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa... 

 Demand destruction for energy is unavoidable. It will be most acute in countries with weak currencies and from there will slowly go up the food chain, unless economic disruption accelerates the process...

 In any case, there is a method to this decline. Sri Lanka is a perfect example of how the decay spreads and a new equilibrium is found. 

 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62077109

Sri Lanka: The basics

• Sri Lanka is an island nation off southern India: It won independence from British rule in 1948. Three ethnic groups - Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim - make up 99% of the country's 22 million population.
• One family of brothers has dominated for years: Mahindra Rajapaksa became a hero among the majority Sinhalese in 2009 when his government defeated Tamil separatist rebels after years of bitter and bloody civil war. His brother Gotabaya, who was defence secretary at the time, is now president.
• Now an economic crisis has led to fury on the streets: Soaring inflation has meant some foods, medication and fuel are in short supply, there are rolling blackouts and ordinary people have taken to the streets in anger with many blaming the Rajapaksa family and their government for the situation.

Life has become a long queue for Sri Lankans - the lack of cash means fuel, food and other basics are in short supply

In Sri Lanka right now, before you've woken up, you're losing.

Power cuts that run late into the sweltering nights steal hours of sleep as the fans cease; whole families waking up sapped from the months-long trial of shuffling their lives around daily blackouts after the country went bankrupt and essentially ran out of fuel.

There are long days to be lived; work days, errands to be run, daily essentials to be bought at twice the price they had been last month.

All this, you're starting a little more broken than you were last week.

Once you've had breakfast - eating less than you used to, or perhaps nothing at all - the battle to find transport beckons.

There have been long queues for fuel for months - now it's all but run out

In the cities, fuel queues curl around entire suburbs like gargantuan metal pythons, growing longer and fatter by the day, choking roads and crushing livelihoods.

Tuk-tuk drivers with their eight-litre tanks are forced to spend days lining up before they can run hires again, for 48 hours perhaps, before they are forced to rejoin the queue, bringing pillows, changes of clothes and water to see them through the ordeal.

Drivers have taken to sleeping in their vehicles as they wait

For a while, middle- and upper-class folk had brought meal packets and soft drinks for those queuing in their neighbourhoods.

Lately, the cost of food, of cooking gas, of clothes, transport, and even what electricity the state will allow you to have, has sky-rocketed so egregiously as the rupee's value plummeted, that even largesse from the moneyed has been in short supply.

People here are waiting in line in Colombo for kerosene to cook with

In working-class neighbourhoods, families have begun to band together around wood fire stoves, to prepare the simplest of meals - rice, and coconut sambol.

Even dhal, a staple of the diet all over South Asia, has become a luxury. Meat? At three times the price it used to be? Forget it.

Fresh fish was once abundant and affordable. Now, boats can't go out to sea, because there is no diesel. The fishermen that can go out sell their catch at vastly inflated rates to hotels and restaurants out of reach to most.

Many others have taken to using firewood as an alternative to gas

A majority of Sri Lankan children have now been forced to subsist on a diet with almost no protein. This is a crisis that has hit on every level from the macroeconomic to the molecular.

Are children's brains, their organs, their muscles, their bones, getting what is required? Milk powder, most of which is imported, has barely been seen on market shelves for months.

The UN is now warning of malnutrition and a humanitarian crisis. For many here, the crisis has been roiling for months.

Trains are more and more crowded - but getting on them is a nightmare...

Those who can find rides generally commute on buses and train carriages bursting with evermore passengers.

Young men cling for their lives on the footboards, while the mashed throng inside gasps for air.

... many cling on outside

For decades Sri Lanka has failed to invest appropriately in its public transport, while the island's wealthier residents continued to complain about the indiscipline of bus and trishaw drivers.

There is a growing view that it's this perceived disdain for regular people from both the political and financial elites that has brought the nation to its knees. And yet it's the lower-middle and working classes that must bear the worst of the economic collapse.

Private hospitals continue to function, albeit less well than they used to. In North Central Anuradhapura, a 16-year old who had suffered a snakebite died as his father rushed desperately from pharmacy to pharmacy to look for the anti-venom the public hospital had run out of.

The healthcare sector can no longer afford many lifesaving medicines. In May, a jaundiced two-day-old died after her parents could not find a trishaw to take her to hospital.

As economists have pointed out, it is the sweeping tax cuts of 2019 - lobbied for and cheered on by many corporate and professional groups - that contributed to emptying Sri Lanka's coffers, and helped bring the nation to this brink.

On the black market, fuel can still be bought at vastly inflated prices, some of it to run the larger private vehicles, and home electricity generators.

Lower down the economic ladder, people attempt to buy bicycles to make trips into work, and find the exchange rate has put even that form of transport out of reach.

A man on a bicycle carries an empty cooking gas cylinder - Colombo's roads are almost deserted

It had been the worst of the power cuts that set off Colombo's major protests, late in March. Back then, the 13-hour daily outages had left a nation exhausted in the hottest weeks of the year.

That fatigue had sparked widespread fury, and a crowd of thousands descended on the eastern Colombo suburb of Mirihana, where the president resides.

Of all the demonstrations in the country over the past year, this was perhaps the most visceral. A man in a motorcycle helmet made a speech railing at the political forces, clergy and media that had delivered the nation into the hands of what was now widely perceived as simultaneously the most self-serving and inept government here in generations.

Later, that man, Sudara Nadeesh, was beaten brutally by the police and arrested, along with several dozen others who suffered the same violent fate.

Sri Lanka had been strung up in a 26-year civil war, but even through that unspeakably violent stretch, the island has never had a president so close to the military's top brass as former defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

The south has found out in the past few months, what northerners have known for decades; dissent is routinely met with state violence.

In recent months largely peaceful protesters have had live rounds shot into their midst, tear gas has been indiscriminately fired at crowds in which small children were present. In queues for essentials, the mildest shows of displeasure have been met with brutal beatings.

The police have been criticised for using disproportionate force against largely peaceful protests

Police say some officers suffered injuries when stones were thrown, but as protesters have lost lives, or ended up in hospital, the police response has been viewed as being wildly disproportionate.

On social media, politicians offer sympathy, posting photos of the public's hardship while asking for change. This has mostly only inspired more outrage. Was it not the politicians themselves who led us here?

And yet, while nationwide protests have called for the removal of the president and his cohort, they remain obstinately in place, their perceived disdain for the public's will evident in the backroom deals that many feel continue to poison the island's politics.

The same leaders accused of crashing Sri Lanka into this ravine insist that only they can lift the island out again, and the policies they devise are met with sharp criticism.

There is now a concerted push, for example, to send more Sri Lankans overseas to work as housemaids, drivers and mechanics in the Middle East, with those emigrants expected to send their earnings home.

This may only deepen the hardship of many of its most vulnerable citizens, as poor Sri Lankans with no hope of finding local employment are forced to leave their families for nations in which they have few protections and little agency. One anthropologist online described this vision for Sri Lanka in stark terms: "the vampire state".

What the future holds for Sri Lanka - no one can say with certainty

By evening in Sri Lanka's crisis, you're drained beyond imagination. Beyond the almost impossible commute because of the lack of petrol and diesel, the everyday functioning of a workplace has itself become a relentless onslaught of crises, with supply chains having broken down, most potential customers having long since refused to spend on anything but essentials, and staff failing to show up.

Then late-night power cuts come again, and you survive on lighter evening meals with each passing week, unable to buy enough food for your home, unable to cook what little you've bought, unable to give your parents their medication, or your children the education they deserve.

Schools are presently shut, as there is no fuel to take them. Classes are online for the third year running.

In Sri Lanka right now, the government continually fails to deliver what little it's promised, relatives and neighbours call to ask for money you don't have to spare, the police and military bear down on what little hope remains, and through all this you're still grateful, because many around you have it so much worse.

Last week, a mother threw herself and her two children into a river.

Every day, a fresh heartbreak.

Andrew Fidel Fernando is an award-winning author and journalist, based in Sri Lanka.

 

Are We Really Screwed?

  Covid-19, Social and economic dislocation and financial crash! This is the third article of today's trilogy. I could have added an article about the climate: While the US is roasting, nothing very special in the West which is locked in a long term drought, here in Japan, we are having one of the coolest Summer ever. Quite nice actually. 

 Not so about finance. The Japanese market is teetering shakily on the edge of the abyss but has been for so long that it looks like this will go on forever: It won't. Eventually gravity reasserts itself, and the coyote will glance below...

 By Dennis Miller

I am increasingly frustrated, wading through my weekly reading stack. It is maddening!

Despite the recent fed action, inflation is soaring, prices are out of control. The economy is slowing, the stock market is tanking. The long-predicted results of outrageous government and central bank policies are coming home to roost.

The signs were clear, anyone with common sense could see it coming, but the politicos ignored the needs of the common people.

When the Glass-Steagall act was passed in 1933, it separated commercial banking from investment banking. It created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to protect individuals from losing money because banks made bad investment decisions. It worked; no depositor lost money under the FDIC umbrella.

In 1999, the Clinton Administration repealed the law. Banks and investment houses merged, and the banking party began. The government required banks lend money to “high risk” borrowers to encourage home ownership, resulting in a housing crisis and bank bailout in 2008.

The huge casino banks were deemed, “Too big to fail!” The government told us they took steps to reign in the high-risk banks. It didn’t happen, Congress failed to protect the citizens, continuing to bail out risky investments with taxpayer money – things got worse.

The Federal Reserve (owned by the same big banks) created cheap money out of thin air; interest rates hit historic lows. In less than 20 years the Federal Reserve Balance Sheet rose from around $700 billion to around $9 trillion.

The Money Game

How do these casino banks make money? They borrow cheap and make loans; many times, packaging those loans and selling them as “investments” to their clients and the general public.

• Hey Zombie Company, want some easy money to buy back your stock, pay extra dividends and award yourself some great bonuses? Step right up, don’t worry about having to pay off the debt. We’ll get you a better bond rating than you deserve.

• Want money for a new house, car, high risk stocks, step right up, get in on the easy money.

• Hey politicos, want to finance your latest vote buying scheme without raising taxes, step right up! Let’s see who can give away the most “free stuff!”

Banks and investment houses would lend money to governments, companies, and individuals without worry about repayment of the debt. The government would bail out the “too big to fail” banks with taxpayer dollars.

The world was awash with cheap money, the stock market boomed, Wall Street and the banks thrived. Defaults on debt? No such thing for the most part, the risky loans were rolled over and sold to the Fed (backed by taxpayers).

The game continues, until it doesn’t. Expanding the money supply 10-fold (doubling in less than two years) has led to horrible inflation. Prices are skyrocketing. The politicos are feeling the heat.

The winners

Bill Bonner shares the details: (emphasis mine)

“Basic expenses – food, shelter, and fuel – are going up so fast, households have less and less left over for “discretionary” spending, which leaves the big box retailers with a lot of unsold products in the box.

…. They are still the people who add the most real value to our lives. Not the hedge fund managers, influencers, or policymakers…but autoworkers, farmers, UPS drivers, cooks, baristas and waiters…carpenters, plumbers and masons.

And here’s the gist of our story: the masses have been cheated, deleted and mistreated. And it’s going to get worse.

In a nutshell…while the wealth of the crème de la crème was teased up by the feds…the working class – which is most of us – got nothing. The top 1% added $36 trillion in wealth since 1999 – or about $3 million per person. The bottom 50% added wealth too, but only about $13,000 each. Each person at the tiny top got 230 times more money than those at the broad bottom.

But all that froth came at a cost. The feds had no extra money, so they pushed down interest rates, borrowed…and printed money to cover the extra costs. The result was $50 trillion worth of debt added to the US economy since 1999.

Who will pay for it? We ‘the people,’ of course. That is what the ‘inflation tax’ is all about.”

In his article, “Decision of the Century” Bonner makes it sound simple:

“We are coming up to the Decision of the Century. There are only two real choices. One way or another, this scam economy is going to blow up. So, the question is whether the Fed blows it up by stopping inflation now. Or, it lets inflation rip and the whole thing blows up later.

Either way, there will be hard times ahead – with crashing stocks, bonds and real estate… and probably riots and maybe even revolution. But if the feds end the scam voluntarily, the wreck could be short and sweet, like ripping off a Band-Aid, with a crash followed by a depression, but ending in a fairly quick recovery. …. The whole thing could be over in 18 to 24 months.

If inflation is allowed to run wild…. These intentional, government-policy inflations last about 16 years on average. In the end, the economy is almost completely destroyed…and the nation’s political and social institutions are left as burnt-out hulks.”

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Bonner’s “Fantasy Land” solution:

“It would be an easy fire to put out.

Congress could begin by balancing the federal budget. Why should the feds spend more than ‘the people’ are willing to pay for? Why should they burden future generations with debt and inflation? Aren’t they just forms of ‘taxation without representation?’

The Fed could do its part too. It would…announce that it would no longer be backstopping the stock market or bailing out Wall Street. No more money-printing. No more rigging interest rates. No more loans to member banks.

…. In a matter of minutes, the whole grotesque abomination…the scam economy…would be history. No more zombie businesses. No more ‘negative’ real yields. No more inflation.”

…let us take a deep breath and come back down to earth. Can you imagine Joe Biden, Jerome Powell, and the 435 members of Congress actually doing these things?”

David Stockman’s column, “Real Personal Income down 20% from One Year Ago” asks (Emphasis mine):

“Is it conceivable that the Fed can ease up on monetary restraint-especially during an election season in which the GOP will be in full-throated anti-inflation war cries?

We think the answer to the above question is negative, and that means the impending hit to the insanely over-valued stock market will be biblical.”

Stockman’s “biblical” terminology grabbed my attention. It’s not just the stock market, it means loss of jobs. Businesses can’t sell their products to people who have no money to buy them.

History.com shares the details of the 1929 crash: (Emphasis mine)

“On October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday hit Wall Street…in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. …. America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression (1929-39), the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world up to that time.

…. During the 1920s, the U.S. stock market underwent rapid expansion,…after a period of wild speculation during the roaring twenties. By then, production had already declined, and unemployment had risen, leaving stocks in great excess of their real value.

…. By 1933, nearly half of America’s banks had failed, and unemployment was approaching…30 percent of the workforce.”

Blow up now, or blow up later?

While the Fed is talking tough, there’s a dirty little secret no one is discussing. Wall Street On Parade (WSOP) let the cat out of the bag, “New York Fed Stuns with new Report: At Year End Its Trading Desk Owned 38% of All 10-30 U. S. Treasuries.”

“There is one paragraph in the…report that took our breath away. It reveals that the New York Fed’s trading operation currently owns 38 percent of all outstanding U.S. Treasury Securities with 10 to 30 years remaining until maturity.

…. The U.S. Treasury market is massive – at $22.6 trillion as of year-end 2021. That any one entity controls a big chunk of the market is deeply concerning. (The same report showed that the New York Fed…owned 25 percent of all maturities of outstanding Treasury debt.)”

Following Bonner’s logic, the quick solution is for Congress to stop deficit spending, do away with the Federal Reserve…or at least reinstate Glass-Steagall; forcing investment banks to sink or swim on their own.

The little secret? Those investment banks own the Federal Reserve, along with 25% of our government debt.

What happens if they are forced to let that debt roll off the books, resulting in the government paying free market interest rates?

The Fed and big banks have Congress over the barrel, even if they want to do the right thing?

Are we screwed?

Probably so for at least a couple of decades. With $30 trillion in debt and another $170 trillion in “unfunded liabilities” politicians have made political promises they can’t keep.

Many will fare better than others, but all will suffer from the misdeeds of the elite and political class, moving on as best we can.

During the Great Depression, banking controls were instituted to keep the banks and much of government spending under control for a couple of generations. Let’s hope we do the same for our offspring that our grandparents did for us.

Welcome To The Slow Motion Depression

  Superb article which is 100% in line with what I think. More than a "conspiracy" what we are witnessing is the result of manipulation, greed and stupidity and as always in the past, the cure for what doesn't work will be more of the same until the system crashes.

 But there is a difference this time: The curse of complexity guaranties that we will settle at a lower level of complexity and will need decades to build a new paradigm. Likewise, declining returns on investment and resources availability guaranty that the new society (New World Order) we are being sold will not work...

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

Think for a moment of other failed experiments in human history.

One that comes to mind is the Bolshevik Revolution. Its leader, Vladimir Lenin, never really expected to take power, much less be put in charge of implementing the system he had spent a career promoting.

He was asked to speak to what communism would mean. He fished around and came up with the idea of electrification of Russia.

It didn’t work. In fact nothing worked. By 1920, electricity was even failing in Russia itself, and food shortages were everywhere. The experiment had already flopped and the workers and peasants were furious.

The answer was the “New Economic Policy” which liberalized the economy and bought the party time. The point is that the communist experiment had failed already, only two years in.

The issue of failing plans from elites has vexed rulers from time immemorial. We live in such times today, arguably on a larger global basis than ever. They said they would suppress a virus but everyone got it anyway.

They said they would print and spend their way out of recession but now we have inflation plus recession. They said they would minimize the social and economic carnage but it is everywhere.

Notice that no one has taken responsibility. No one has admitted error. Or more precisely, what people like Bill Gates say now is that their theory was fine and their plans were brilliant, but there were periodic missteps in judgment owing to a lack of information, but keep trusting them because they will get better at this.

Just wait and see.

The FDA

Another tactic they are using is to claim that only now can we treat the Coronavirus like a normal pathogen because the new mutations, though more widespread, are also less severe. Fine. Except that with the mutations, the threshold for herd immunity is also rising.

We might have been done with this nonsense two years ago had we lived life normally. The FDA’s latest blather is designed to cover that up.

Also, you will notice that last weekend, the FDA put major new warnings on the J&J vaccine, as if it has uniquely dangerous adverse effects. They did this at the same time massive documents from Pfizer are being dumped all over the Internet, and they all show sketchy trial methods and very serious side effects.

The FDA’s announcement looks highly suspicious: like an attempt to seem scrupulous while letting the biggest offenders off the hook.

At least we aren’t going the way of China. Xi Jinping announced to the party congress over the weekend that he will tolerate no dissent against the zero Covid ideal. The pathogen will be crushed everywhere it appears.

China now (if you can believe the official data) has one of the lowest rates of infection of anywhere in the world. That means that another billion or so people still will get it, and that means rolling lockdowns for the duration.

If this really happens, the great promise of this great country will be torn down by the arrogance and crankishness of one single dictator. That’s a tremendous tragedy, one that will have a profoundly negative impact on the global economy for many years to come.

Roiling Crisis

It’s almost difficult to keep up with the ongoing disasters taking place these days. Let’s talk about the impending shortage in electricity, the stuff we are all supposed to be using as a replacement for fossil fuels in the brave new world being created for us by our lords and masters.

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Reports the Wall Street Journal, in a piece that went largely unnoticed:

California’s grid operator said Friday that it anticipates a shortfall in supplies this summer, especially if extreme heat, wildfires or delays in bringing new power sources online exacerbate the constraints. The Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO, which oversees a large regional grid spanning much of the Midwest, said late last month that capacity shortages may force it to take emergency measures to meet summer demand and flagged the risk of outages. In Texas, where a number of power plants lately went offline for maintenance, the grid operator warned of tight conditions during a heat wave expected to last into the next week.

The risk of electricity shortages is rising throughout the U.S. as traditional power plants are being retired more quickly than they can be replaced by renewable energy and battery storage. Power grids are feeling the strain as the U.S. makes a historic transition from conventional power plants fueled by coal and natural gas to cleaner forms of energy such as wind and solar power, and aging nuclear plants are slated for retirement in many parts of the country.

In summary, another central plan born of arrogance and presence seems to be on the verge of complete failure, even to the point of blackouts, like a third world has experienced for many years. Green energy is becoming no energy. Zero emissions is becoming zero power.

Further:

Speeding the build-out of renewable energy and batteries has become an especially difficult proposition amid supply-chain challenges and inflation. Most recently, a probe by the Commerce Department into whether Chinese solar manufacturers are circumventing trade tariffs on solar panels has halted imports of key components needed to build new solar farms and effectively brought the U.S. solar industry to a standstill.

So here we see the combination of consequences of many different cockamamie ideas: tariffs, green energy policy, fiscal irresponsibility, plus money printing. Amazing. We have high inflation, the breakdown of global trade, plus a failed attempt to dial back fossil fuels and rely on wind and water. It’s absurd, and we could pay the price sooner rather than later.

Glorious Food

If that weren’t bad enough, there are people raising alarms about an impending food shortage to complement the shortage of so much else. Plus we are less than three months away from the declaration of recession.

And while inflation has calmed down a bit for now, there is every reason to believe that it will kick back up again by late summer. This will give us a combination of inflation, recession, blackouts, and food shortages.

That’s a politically toxic mix, to say the least. And let’s add one more piece to the puzzle: weakened and falling financials. The terrible year seems ever less an aberration and more and more the beginnings of an enduring bear market in nearly everywhere.

This has even affected the crypto market, as large institutional investors have gotten squeamish about a technology they never understood but only embraced in hopes of return.

Looking back, there is nothing terribly surprising about any of this. It’s a consequence of safety culture and a belief that powerful, rich, and intelligent people can manage the world better than the rest of us. We’ve been here many times in history, and it has always foreshadowed a long period of suffering.

Lenin failed just as Gates, Powell, Fauci, and Psaki have failed. Few things are more dangerous to the future of humanity than a failed and humiliated ruling class that still possesses power. They cannot and will not admit error, so their only plan is to double and triple down on failure.

The term “scorched-earth” is usually used metaphorically. Maybe this time it will become real.

More Evidence Vitamin D Is Effective in Preventing COVID-19

 Vitamin D Is Effective in Preventing COVID-19... or maybe not! It seems to be more complicated as many tests have failed to prove a connection (Results used extensively to discredit Vitamin D). It may well be as explained in the article below that correlation is not causation. Exposure to the sun seems to be protecting against Covid-19 but it may or may not be through Vitamin D. Read on...

Via Mercola

Story at-a-glance

• Recent research assessing the effectiveness of vitamin D supplementation for the prevention of COVID-19 in frontline health care workers found only 6.4% of those taking vitamin D tested positive for COVID, compared to 24.5% of controls
• The treatment group received 4,000 international units (IUs) of vitamin D per day for 30 days. The use of fixed dosing is a shortcoming of this study, as the most accurate way to assess vitamin D’s benefits is by comparing the effects of different serum vitamin D levels
• Data from GrassrootsHealth’s D*Action studies suggest the optimal level for disease prevention and good health is a vitamin D level between 60 ng/mL and 80 ng/mL. The cutoff for sufficiency appears to be around 40 ng/mL
• Sun exposure is exponentially superior to oral supplementation, as it not only triggers vitamin D production but also melatonin production inside your mitochondria
• Melatonin has been shown to be an important part of COVID treatment, reducing incidence of thrombosis and sepsis and lowering mortality. Evidence suggests sun exposure may help combat any number of respiratory infections, including COVID, and the production of melatonin in your mitochondria — not merely vitamin D production — appears to be a key part of how and why that works

Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, it became apparent that vitamin D played an important role and could help reduce incidence of positive tests, infection severity and the risk of hospitalization and death.

The evidence of benefit was so clear, I published a scientific review¹ in the journal Nutrients at the end of October 2020, co-written with William Grant, Ph.D., and Dr. Carol Wagner, both of whom are part of the GrassrootsHealth expert vitamin D panel.

This paper, “Evidence Regarding Vitamin D and Risk of COVID-19 and Its Severity” — which you can download and read for free — ended up being the second-most downloaded Nutrients paper in the 12 months following its publication.

The study with the most downloads that year and the all-time highest number of views (178,562) for any Nutrients paper was another vitamin D study² by Bhattoa et.al., which found vitamin D supplementation reduced the risk of both influenza and COVID-19 infections and deaths. One of the coauthors of my paper, Grant, was a coauthor on this paper as well.

Several other vitamin D papers topped the lists of views, downloads and citations as well, which was a testament to the fact that many were in fact paying attention to the data rather than blindly believing media claims that there was “no scientific basis” for the recommendation of vitamin D for COVID.

More Evidence for Vitamin D

Since then, mounting data have continued to support and strengthen the recommendation of vitamin D against COVID. One of the most recent pieces of evidence is a paper^3,4 that assessed the effectiveness of vitamin D supplementation for the prevention of COVID-19 in frontline health care workers, published in the June 2022 issue of Archives of Medical Research.

A total of 321 health care workers in four Mexican hospitals were enrolled, all of whom tested negative for COVID at the start of the study. They were then randomly assigned to receive 4,000 international units (IUs) of vitamin D per day for 30 days, or a placebo. Along with Real-Time PCR testing, participants’ vitamin D levels and antibody levels were also measured at baseline and again on day 45.

Follow-up was completed by 192 participants: 94 in the treatment group and 98 controls, and the difference in infection rates was pretty impressive. Only 6.4% of those taking vitamin D tested positive for COVID during the trial, compared to 24.5% of controls. (The p-value was less than 0.001, and anything below 0.05 is considered statistically significant.)

The researchers concluded that lower infection risk was associated with an incremental increase in the blood level of vitamin D, independently of vitamin D deficiency. This means, even if an individual started out with deficiency and still had a deficient or insufficient blood level of vitamin D at the end of the study, as long as it went up a little bit, it had a protective effect.

Shortcomings of This Study

As I’ve mentioned in most all previous vitamin D articles, for optimal benefit, it’s really your blood level that counts, not the dose of vitamin D used. Data from GrassrootsHealth’s D*Action studies suggest the optimal level for disease prevention and good health is between 60 ng/mL and 80 ng/mL, while the cutoff for sufficiency appears to be around 40 ng/mL.

In Europe, the measurements you’re looking for are 150 to 200 nmol/L and 100 nmol/L respectively. To convert ng/mL into the European measurement (nmol/L), simply multiply the ng/mL measurement by 2.5. It’s also worth noting that 4,000 IUs is a fairly low dose. If you’re deficient, you may need a whole lot more, perhaps 8,000 to 10,000 IUs a day, to reach an ideal vitamin D blood level.

The fact that they used fixed dosing and didn’t titrate doses based on vitamin D levels in the blood is a shortcoming of this study. To their credit, they did include vitamin D testing, even if it wasn’t the primary consideration. Ideally, a study of this kind would focus on getting the treatment group into a protective vitamin D level of 60 to 80 ng/ml, and then compare the effects with controls.

All of that said, this double-blind, randomized, controlled trial (RCT) was not available when I wrote my paper, and it’s good to know there’s now additional support for supplementation, even at relatively low, fixed doses.

Of course, sun exposure is exponentially superior to oral supplementation, and the only way to ensure you’re getting an ideal amount of sun exposure is by getting your vitamin D level tested on a regular basis (ideally twice a year, in winter and summer).

Why Sun Exposure Is the Best Way to Optimize Vitamin D

Why use sun exposure rather than oral vitamin D? The short answer is that sun exposure gives you far more bang for your buck. Not only is it free, but it also provides a plethora of biological health benefits over and beyond vitamin D production.

If the science of sun exposure interests you, check out Dr. Roger Seheult’s MedCram lecture above. In it, he explains the ins and outs of how sunlight impacts your health. One really important health benefit you can only get from sunlight and not oral supplementation is mitochondrial melatonin production.

The best review of the sun’s effect on melatonin is the February 2020 paper,⁵ “Melatonin in Mitochondria: Mitigating Clear and Present Dangers,” published in the Physiology journal. It’s written by the best researcher in melatonin, Russel Reiter, Ph.D., whom I first heard lecture on melatonin over 25 years ago.

Reiter’s key finding is that 95% of the melatonin your body produces is made inside your mitochondria in response to near-infrared radiation from the sun or other near IR sources.

Only 5% of melatonin is produced in your pineal gland. Melatonin is a master hormone,⁶ a potent antioxidant⁷ and antioxidant recycler,⁸ and a master regulator of inflammation and cell death.⁹ These functions are part of what makes melatonin such an important anticancer molecule.¹⁰

So, to produce melatonin inside your mitochondria actually makes perfect sense, as your mitochondria desperately need protection from the damage caused by oxidative stress produced in the electron transport chain.

In summary, your mitochondria produce ATP, the energy currency of your cells. A byproduct of this ATP production is reactive oxidative species (ROS), which are responsible for oxidative stress. Excessive amounts of ROS will damage your mitochondria, contributing to suboptimal health, inflammation and chronic health conditions such as diabetes, obesity and thrombosis (blood clots).

The good news is your body has a built-in way to counteract these ROS. Inside your mitochondria, you also have an antioxidant system, and the main antioxidant is melatonin. Melatonin also upregulates your glutathione pathway, which is another potent antioxidant pathway. So, your body is literally designed to address the destructive impact of energy production, but you need sun exposure in order for that mechanism to work.

Sun Exposure and the Prevention of Viral Infections

Interestingly enough, melatonin has also been shown to be an important part of COVID treatment, reducing incidence of thrombosis and sepsis¹¹ and lowering mortality.^12,13

Evidence suggests sun exposure may help combat any number of respiratory infections, including COVID, and the production of melatonin in your mitochondria appears to be a key part of how and why that works.

Evidence suggests sun exposure may help combat any number of respiratory infections, including COVID, and the production of melatonin in your mitochondria appears to be a key part of how and why that works.

There are a number of observations showing COVID rates across the world correlate to the solar index or the amount of sun striking the area. Positive case rates also correlate with vitamin D levels in the blood. Higher blood levels correlate with lower incidence of COVID and higher rates of survival for inpatients.

The same correlation does not always appear when using oral supplementation, however. Here, studies have produced mixed results. Some studies looking at the effect of giving vitamin D to patients with severe COVID, for example, found no benefit, even at very high doses. So, what’s going on?

In short, your vitamin D level may simply be a marker for sun exposure. Many of the benefits of sun exposure may actually be due to factors that are unrelated to vitamin D. For example, research¹⁴ looking at UVA levels and COVID mortality rates found areas of the U.S., the U.K. and Italy with higher UVA also had lower COVID mortality rates.

Vitamin D does not rise in response to UVA, only UVB, so, something in the sunlight other than vitamin D must be responsible for the beneficial impact. In that particular study, they speculated that nitric oxide, which is produced in response to UVA, could be the key, as nitric oxide has been shown to limit SARS-CoV-2 replication in vitro.

But while it’s true that nitric oxide rises in response to sunlight (specifically UVA and near-infrared), the primary mechanism at work may in fact be melatonin, because it’s produced in response to the infrared spectrum — which makes up a much greater portion of the solar spectrum than ultraviolet — and works regardless of the angle at which it hits the earth.

Hence the southern part of England can have lower COVID deaths than the northern part, even though the entire country is too far north for vitamin D production.

Melatonin and Sunlight Are Intimately Connected

Melatonin and sunlight are intimately linked and their relationship is unique in the fact that there are two forms of melatonin, circulatory and subcellular, or that produced by your pineal gland and secreted into the blood, and that produced by your mitochondria and used there locally.

Both appear to be controlled by either the absence of sunlight or the presence of sunlight. While circulatory melatonin may be the “hormone of darkness,” subcellular melatonin is the “hormone of daylight.”

Since the beginning of human history, people have lived and worked outdoors during the light of day, absorbing light energy from the sky. An average of 10 hours outdoors each day, 70 hours weekly, was common. Today, we spend an average of fewer than 30 minutes a day or a mere three hours per week in daylight, according to a study by Dr. Daniel Kripke, professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego.¹⁵

It is likely that near-infrared photons stimulate subcellular melatonin synthesis in your mitochondria through cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) or NF-kB activation, or alternatively by stimulating bone marrow stem cells.¹⁶

However, if you fail to expose your skin to sufficient near-infrared light from the sun, then your mitochondria will have seriously depleted melatonin levels that can’t be corrected through supplementation. This is why it is essential to get in the sun every day you can and have as much clothing removed as possible. This is the time of year where nearly everyone in the U.S. can do it. So, no excuses now, shoot for an hour a day in the sun.

Vitamin D Level Is Directly Correlated to COVID-19 Outcome

As mentioned, over the past two years, many published studies confirm the wisdom of using vitamin D against COVID and other respiratory infections, and while sun exposure is best, oral supplementation can still be beneficial.

According to a Spanish study^17,18,19 published online October 27, 2020, in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 82.2% of COVID-19 patients tested were found to be deficient in vitamin D, the medical term for which is 25-hydroxycholecalciferol (25OHD).

While this particular study failed to find a correlation between vitamin D levels and disease severity, other studies have shown patients with higher levels do tend to have milder disease. In fact, one such study^20,21 found your risk of developing a severe case of, and dying from, COVID-19 is significantly lower once your vitamin D level gets above 30 ng/mL (75 nmol/L).

In the video above, Ivor Cummins, biochemist and chief program officer for Irish Heart Disease Awareness, reviews a number of studies showing how your vitamin D level can impact the outcomes from COVID-19.

One of the reasons why vitamin D is so important against COVID-19 has to do with its influence on T cell responses. Animal research²² published in 2014 explained how vitamin D receptor signals regulate T cell responses and therefore play an important role in your body’s defense against viral and bacterial infections.

As noted in that study, when vitamin D signaling is impaired, it significantly impacts the quantity, quality, breadth and location of CD8 T cell immunity, resulting in more severe viral and bacterial infections.

What’s more, according to a December 11, 2020, paper²³ in the journal Vaccine: X, high-quality T cell response actually appears to be far more important than antibodies when it comes to providing protective immunity against SARS-CoV-2 specifically.

Epitopes associated with SARS-CoV-2 have been identified on CD4 and CD8 T-cells in the blood from patients who have successfully recovered from COVID-19, and according to the authors, these epitopes “are much less dominated by spike protein than in previous coronavirus infections.”²⁴

Epitopes²⁵ are sites on the virus that allow antibodies or cell receptors in your immune system to recognize it. This is why epitopes are also referred to as “antigenic determinants,” as they are the part that is recognized by an antibody, B-cell receptor or T-cell receptor.

Most antigens — substances that bind specifically to an antibody or a T-cell receptor — have several different epitopes, which allow it to be recognized by several different antibodies.

We May Be Seeing the Results of Pathogenic Priming

Importantly, some epitopes can cause autoimmunological pathogenic priming if you’ve been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 or exposed via a COVID-19 vaccine.²⁶

In other words, if you’ve had the infection once, and get reinfected (either by SARS-CoV-2 or a sufficiently similar coronavirus), the second bout has the potential to be more severe than the first. Similarly, if you get the COVID shot and are then infected with SARS-CoV-2, your infection could potentially be more severe than had you not gotten the shot.

We’re now also finding the COVID shot can make you more susceptible to repeated COVID reinfections, compared to people with natural immunity, and the more shots you get, the greater that risk.

COVID-19 is now actually more than twice as prevalent among the boosted, compared to those who quit after the initial series.^27,28 Pfizer’s pediatric trial and Moderna’s adult trial^29,30 also reveal the shots raise, rather than lower, the risk of reinfection³¹ (meaning catching COVID more than once). I review these and other evidences for this in “Why Three COVID Jabs Are Worse Than Two.”

How to Optimize Your Vitamin D

In closing, remember that the most crucial factor when it comes to vitamin D is your blood level, not the dose, as the dose you need is dependent on several individual factors, including your baseline blood level. Again, the level you’re shooting for is between 60 ng/mL and 80 ng/mL (150 nmol/L to 200 nmol/L).

I’ve published a comprehensive vitamin D report in which I detail vitamin D’s mechanisms of action and how to ensure optimal levels. I recommend downloading and sharing that report with everyone you know. A quick summary of the key steps is as follows:

1. First, measure your vitamin D level — One of the easiest and most cost-effective ways of measuring your vitamin D level is to participate in the GrassrootsHealth’s personalized nutrition project, which includes a vitamin D testing kit.

2. Once you know what your blood level is, you can assess the dose needed to maintain or improve your level. Your first and primary goal is to get in the sun for one hour a day close to solar noon with minimal clothes on as this will not only increase your vitamin D levels but your melatonin.

If you cannot get enough vitamin D from the sun (you can use the DMinder app³² to see how much vitamin D your body can make depending on your location and other individual factors), then you’ll need an oral supplement.

Ideally, take oral vitamin D3 together with magnesium and K2, as you need 244% more oral vitamin D if you’re not also taking magnesium and vitamin K2.³³ What this means in practical terms is that if you take all three supplements in combination, you need far less oral vitamin D in order to achieve a healthy vitamin D level.

3. Assess your individualized vitamin D dosage — To do that, you can either use the chart below, or use GrassrootsHealth’s Vitamin D*calculator. (To convert ng/mL into the European measurement (nmol/L), simply multiply the ng/mL measurement by 2.5.) To calculate how much vitamin D you may be getting from regular sun exposure in addition to your supplemental intake, use the DMinder app.³⁴

4. Retest in three to six months — Lastly, you’ll need to remeasure your vitamin D level in three to six months, to evaluate how your sun exposure and/or supplement dose is working for you.

NETHERLANDS Update (Video - 11')

  It is getting more and more difficult not to realize that Western governments, almost without exception are wrecking the economy voluntarily. To understand this, you need to have a global vision of what is going on around the world. 

 Most people are busy with their life and have very little time for "conspiracy theories" even though over time our reality is more and more in tune to the worst outcome some people were predicting.

 The truth is that our financial system is toast and more generally our social contract which is behind it is crumbling. Anybody with a minimum of intelligence can understand this. But the "Davos crowd", since we have to call these people something, have both the power and clout to do something about it. And boy, are they busy conspiring and manipulating willing governments into an outcome which look more and more catastrophic for the vast majority of people.

 The Green New Deal people are being sold is neither green nor a deal. It is a dictate back into poverty with total control and no possible escape.  

 Let's hope they wake up before it's too late. But time is short. I am afraid history will accelerate and things will take a turn for the worst very soon...

 Here's one of the early warnings from the Netherlands...

 

Pathologist Speaks Out About Covid Jab Effects By Dr. Joseph Mercola

  The information below about the effects of the Covid Vaccine compiled by Dr Ryan Cole is stunning and rather complete. It confirms almost ALL the suspicions about the vaccine. (A must read!)

Pathologist Speaks Out About Covid Jab Effects

By Dr. Joseph Mercola

Dr. Ryan Cole, an anatomic clinical pathologist with a subspecialty in skin pathology and postgraduate Ph.D. training in immunology, has been on the frontlines exposing the fraudulent COVID narrative.

Since 2004, he’s been operating his own business, a pathology laboratory, which gives him rare freedom and flexibility to comment on what he’s seeing. Most others would lose their jobs for speaking out the way Cole has.

Truth Telling Is a Risky Business

That doesn’t mean he hasn’t paid a price for speaking out about and defending real science though. He’s triple board certified and has 12 state licenses, and because of his stance against COVID recommendations, some of the credentialing organizations have taken action against him.

“I’ve seen 500,000 patients diagnostically in my career through the microscope. So, I have a long track record of diagnostics. I have not had a patient care complaint against me in 26 years of being a physician,” he says. “I still don’t, and this is what’s fascinating.

Of those 12 licenses, four were under attack, three are still under attack — in Washington, Arizona and Minnesota — [yet there’s] not a single patient care complaint. All the attacks against me have been political complaints to boards of medicine, which is not legal for them to do. Not a single one of those complaints is from a patient.

And then — really the most egregious thing — was ex parte, without me being present, without even sending a certified letter, the College of American Pathologists removed my fellowship status, which is defamatory.

I went back and found their complaint and looked at what they did, and I actually have a wonderful defamation lawsuit against them, because everything they did was anti-scientific. So, they can either restore [my fellowship] now, or just pay me a big check down the road. One or the other.”

He’s also lost about half of his business, as two insurance companies canceled him for “unprofessional behavior,” i.e., for sharing and discussing the science of COVID, and one of his best friends, whom he’s worked with for 12 years, canceled their business relationship as he didn’t want Cole’s outspokenness to affect his business. “All because of the defamation by the media, so to tell the truth in this day and age is a dangerous thing,” he says.

Suspicions Arose Early On

From his Ph.D. work in immunology, Cole was very aware of SARS-CoV-1 and MERS, having studied both, so when the warp speed program to develop a pandemic SARS-CoV-2 vaccine was announced, he became immediately suspicious.

“I thought, wait a minute, you can’t vaccinate against corona viruses!” he says. “This family of viruses is not amenable to vaccination, based on mutation rates. So, my concern was very high, early on.”

Cole’s lab ramped up PCR testing, using a cycle threshold (CT) of 35, rather than the recommended 40 to 45, as he knew that high a CT would result in 98% false positives. On a side note, pathologists not only assess tissue samples and biopsies, they’re also in charge of testing. The head of every major clinical lab is a pathologist. They’re basically in charge of quality control.

“As pathologist, we’re constantly looking at patterns, be it under the microscope or be it in lab data. We’re looking at blood reports. We’re looking at what’s out of range on blood reports. We’re looking at microbiology. We’re looking at molecular biology. We’re looking at cultures. We’re looking at pap smears. We’re looking, across the board, at those clinical parameters in addition to tissue biopsies,” he explains.

“I have 70 employees, and if there’s a blood smear that looks unusual, they bring it to me. If there are parameters on a test that look widely out of range, they bring it to me. And I call and talk to the clinician — [I’m the] doctor to the doctor. We have a consultation practice with the clinicians so I can help them understand what’s happening with their patient, and then they can make clinical decisions going forward.”

Post-Jab Cancer Explosion

One of the apparent side effects of the COVID jab that Cole has been warning and talking about is cancer. He explains:

“Obviously, during COVID, we saw some parameters change in blood tests. There was a concern about clotting. We saw elevated clotting factors. We know that the early variants were pretty severe in terms of inducing clotting, which was a shame because the whole world should have been simply using anti-inflammatories, steroids and anti-clotting agents, and so many more people would’ve lived.

My colleague, Dr. [Shankara] Chetty in South Africa, was having phenomenal success with antihistamine steroids and anti-clotting agents. So anyway, that first year, we saw drops in white blood cell counts, we saw decreases in certain subsets of T-cells. But when the shots rolled out, things changed.

At first I noticed kind of an innocuous little bump that we see usually in children. It’s a little virus called molluscum contagiosum [that causes] a little white bump.

Usually, by the time you’re a tween or early teen, you’ve built immunity to that and you never get them again, or rarely get them again. But after the shots rolled out, all of a sudden, in 80-year-olds, 70-year-olds, 60-year-olds, 50-year-olds, I started seeing literally a 20-fold increase in this little innocuous viral bump. And I thought, ‘Uh oh, this means they’ve lost immune memory’ …

Those subsets of T-cells that keep viruses in check are very important for keeping cancer in check. And this is where immunology jumps into the picture. All of us have some atypical cells, and we have the ‘Marines’ of our immune system, our natural killer (NK) cells. They’re on the frontline circulating. We have about 30 billion T-cells circulating in our blood, many of which are killer cells and NK cells.

Our other innate cells are our macrophages, monocytes and dendritic cells. They’re on that frontline. They’re shaking hands with every cell in your body all day long saying, ‘Friend or foe? Friend or foe? Oh gosh, this one has some mutations, it’s now a foe.’ They’ll poke a little hole in it, throw in a little enzyme called a grandzyme — a ‘hand grenade’ — blow up that cell, and we’re good.

But what happened after these shots rolled out is that many of those cell subsets started decreasing in number. The first cancer I saw uptick was cancers of the uterus, endometrial cancers. Usually, I would see maybe two endometrial cancers a month. All of a sudden, a few months after the rollout of the shots, I was seeing two or three a week.

Another subspecialty area of focus for me is melanoma. And I started seeing melanomas, not only in younger patients, as the shots dropped down in age cohort, but they were thicker. The other fascinating thing was they’re more aggressive in terms of how many dividing cells was present in each tumor. I’m still seeing this.

Beyond that … I’ve been traveling the country and the world quite a bit … and wherever I go now, I have doctors and nurses approach me saying, ‘What you’re saying, we’ve been seeing.’

I was having a conversation with a chair of a large oncology department in Tallahassee, and he said, ‘I usually see an aggressive brain cancer in a young patient maybe every decade.’ After the boosters rolled out, he saw five astrocytomas, five aggressive brain cancers, in one month.

Then, I’m in Jacksonville the next day, having a conversation with a family doctor. He said, ‘Gosh, it’s strange, I usually see a kidney cancer in a young patient every decade or so. I’ve seen five in the last month.’

Then I was in the UK a couple weeks ago. I had a doctor from Ireland who’s been a practicing family doc, GP, for 36 years, and he said, ‘I have seen more cancer in my young patients ever since the shots rolled out, and the booster, than I have ever seen in my entire career.’

Same thing, a nurse that works emergency department in the UK, [said she’s seen] not only the heart inflammation in young children, but cancers in young patients and aggressive leukemias. So everywhere I go, I have doctors confirming my observations … I’ve had many of them approach me and say, ‘Hey look, I’m seeing what you’re saying, but I can’t say it because I’ll get fired.'”

Cancer Spike Is Being Covered Up

Aside from what Cole has seen in his own lab, a military whistleblower has also come forward with data from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) database showing dramatic increases in medical visits for cancer, neurological diseases, infertility, autoimmune diseases and several other conditions, post-jab.¹

The DMED is one of the best databases in the world, as the Department of Defense keeps very close tabs on what’s happening with our troops. This DMED data was presented during a hearing led by Sen. Ron Johnson. A week after that hearing, the DoD froze access to the DMED, and when it reopened a week later, the data were all changed to eliminate the data spikes.

“That’s what was really shocking,” Cole says. “I think this is basically fraud to the level of Watergate, in terms of [there being] somebody behind the scenes, and then the private company that actually manages that database … manipulated it.”

The DoD has tried to explain this suspicious activity claiming a “bug” in the system had resulted in underreporting of medical conditions in the five years prior to 2021. The number of cancers and other health problems were actually higher in 2015 through 2020 than initially indicated, they said.

However, how can a program error cause data corruption for five consecutive years and then self-correct, resulting in perfect numbers for 2021? And how did they not notice the error earlier? Again, this is one of the best-kept databases in the world. And how come this “bug” only affected conditions that also just so happen to be known and/or suspected side effects of the jab?

Future Prognostication

Clearly, cancer has been on the rise for decades, thanks to dietary factors, but the COVID jabs appear to dramatically accelerate the disease process. There are no published studies to help us foretell the future, but based on what Cole has found so far, how long does he think it’ll be before conditions like cancer spiral out of control?

“That’s a great question,” he says. “One of the important findings I’ve heard from many of these clinicians is that many of their patients who have been cancer-free for three, four, five years, their PET scan looks great, no detectable disease, and after that second or third shot, all of a sudden there’s Stage 4 disease. It’s like wildfire.

And this goes back to immune suppressive mechanisms, the damage that the persistent spike protein and the persistent modified RNA (mRNA) cause. So, aggressive cancers arising very quickly are one thing we’re seeing. Because it’s a dose-dependent poisoning curve — in terms of the more spike you have circulating, the worse your immune system seems to be doing — the No. 1 thing is, don’t get another shot.

Because it is causing that immune suppression that’s allowing those cancer mechanisms. Over time … I would say we’re going to see a consistent twofold to threefold increase in certain cancers, endometrial cancers, breast cancers, cancers of the prostate, cancers that are testicular or ovarian, neurologic cancers.

This spike protein has a propensity to cross the blood brain barrier and invade neural tissues. We know what it does to mitochondrial activity in terms of inhibiting it, blocking it, ruining cytochrome C oxidase systems, decreasing ATP.

Cancer is a hypoxic state. When you don’t have good cellular activity and cellular respiration and hypo-oxygenation, you end up with mechanisms that can induce more aggressive cancer. So, I think, at a minimum, [there’ll be a] two- to threefold [increase] … over the next year or two.

We can only hope that the immune system can normalize and we come up with enough interventions and treatments that will reverse some of this, what some people call spikeopathy, or the different diseases that are being caused by this persistent spike. ‘I don’t know’ is the honest answer, but that would be my projection based on I’ve seen.”

Excess Mortality Has Dramatically Increased

Abnormal blood clotting is another commonly reported side effect of the jabs. Post-mortem investigations have revealed thick, extremely long rubbery clots, including in the arteries, which is rare. The longest Cole has seen was about two feet. We’re also seeing a lot of micro-clotting, heart inflammation (myocarditis), strokes and heart attacks — all of which can have lethal consequences.

It’s highly concerning that we have regulatory agencies allowing the most dangerous medical product ever released on humanity to persist in the marketplace. ~ Dr. Ryan Cole

In early January 2022, OneAmerica, a national mutual life insurance company, announced² the death rate of working-age Americans (18 to 64), in the third quarter of 2021, was 40% higher than prepandemic levels. And this excess mortality was not due to COVID infection. Many of those deaths were in fact cardiac deaths and strokes, which fits the injury profile of the COVID shots.

“After they came forward, additional insurance companies said, ‘We’re seeing anywhere from 30% to 50% increase in claims as well.’ They have no horse in the race. They’re just observing. And I say that as a pathologist too. Look, I don’t create disease. I don’t prevent disease. I’m a reporter at the scene of the crash.

My job is simply to report patterns, and then we can scientifically confirm those data patterns. And the all-cause death is increased in those who’ve gotten two, three shots. Again, it’s a dose-dependent curve. The more spike your body is making, the worse people tend to do over time.

Even Walgreens came out a couple weeks ago and showed their data. Individuals that got shots are getting COVID at higher rates. Even the mainstream media finally, last week — I think it was Good Morning America — said, ‘It’s looking like the boosters are a bad idea because it’s immune suppressing people.’

So, we’re finally making some progress and getting traction in the mainstream where at least the narrative is cracking. There’s a crack in the dam and it’s starting to leak. Hopefully it’ll rush forward and people will go, ‘Whoa, this was a bad idea. Let’s stop this chaos.’ But the FDA is trying to roll it out on [infants] of all things now … It’s really tragic.”

Why Was the Most Toxic Part of the Virus Chosen?

Considering autopsies have shown spike protein is still present at least four months after their last shot, it seems reasonable to assume that severe health problems can arise months or even years down the road. In fact, we still don’t know if the body ever stops producing spike protein once this genetically modified mRNA is injected.

“We know the spike is the inflammatory aspect of the virus, and our cells are made into spike toxin factories,” Cole says. “Studies out of the Salk Institute show that the spike is the cytotoxic aspect of [COVID-19], so we’re giving a shot that makes the toxic part of the virus, and it’s persisting.

That’s why I think we’re going to see this consistent elevation of different diseases related to the spike, be it cardiac, strokes, chronic clotting conditions, individuals dying from pulmonary emboli … It’s highly concerning that we have regulatory agencies allowing the most dangerous medical product ever released on humanity to persist in the marketplace.”

Neurological and Vascular Chaos

As predicted by MIT researcher Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., we’re now also starting to see reports of Creutzfeldt-Jakob — human mad cow disease — which is a prion disease that basically destroys the brain.

Strokes in young people and children are also on the rise. Media are now trying to convince you that this is “normal,” but it is anything but. Historically, children and teens do not die from strokes. This is a brand-new phenomenon, courtesy of the COVID jabs.

Microvascular clots (microvascular infarcts) are also a known contributing factor, in the long term, to early onset dementia. So, that’s yet another potential health avalanche in the making.

Four Helpful Remedies

I’ve quickly become a fan of pharmaceutical grade methylene blue, as it’s been shown to improve mitochondrial respiration and aid in mitochondrial repair. At 15 to 20 milligrams a day, it could potentially go a long way toward resolving some of the fatigue many suffer post-jab and post-COVID. It may also be helpful in acute strokes. The primary contraindication is if you have a G6PD deficiency (a hereditary genetic condition), in which case you should not use methylene blue at all.

Another important remedy is near-infrared light. It triggers production of melatonin in your mitochondria³ where you need it most. By mopping up reactive oxygen species, it too helps improve mitochondrial function and repair. Natural sunlight is 54.3% near-infrared radiation,⁴ so this treatment is available for free.

For neurological side effects of the shot, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant called fluvoxamine may be helpful. Cole explains the mechanism behind it:

“[Fluvoxamine] upregulates a receptor called sigma-1, which blocks another receptor called inositol-requiring enzyme 1, which is a precursor for cytokines. So, fluvoxamine will block cytokine production in neural tissues. And that’s why [it works]. It’s not because of its antidepressant effects. It’s a cytokine precursor blocker. So, you actually are decreasing a cytokine storm in neural tissues.

This is why one uses fluvoxamine. There are other SSRIs, but this mechanism is very specific to fluvoxamine. It’s a tough to tolerate drug for some people. It makes some people anxious and agitated, but if you can tolerate it for two weeks, you can really turn down those inflammatory pathways in many patients. I’m not going to say everybody, but I’ve seen it work in many patients.”

A fourth treatment suggestion is hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). This too can be phenomenally helpful for strokes, heart attacks, autoimmune diseases and neurodegenerative disorders. To learn more, see “Hyperbaric Therapy — A Vastly Underused Treatment Modality.”

IMPORTANT: COVID Shots Are Not Pharmaceutical Grade

Seneff also warned about potential unknowns arising from fragmented mRNA and impurities, as tests have shown these jabs really are NOT pharmaceutical grade, as you’d expect. Cole comments:

“These aren’t pure products, and I think this is a very important point. When Pfizer submitted vials to the European Medicines Agency to look at purity … they were in the 50% range … The TGA in Australia looked at it and said, ‘Look, these are only about 60% pure.’

This means you have a lot of fragmented sequences of mRNA that don’t have a stop or a start code on. They’re not coding for what you think they’re coding for. They’re coding for other tinier, shorter fragments. Are those mitogenic? Probably, but we don’t know. Can those reverse transcribe into our own DNA? Studies out of Sweden … show yes, they can …

And then, when they manufacture, they can’t spin and agitate these, so you get all these lipids that collect at the top of these big vats. So now you get some batches that are hyperconcentrated and some are hypoconcentrated. It appears about 5% of the batches are responsible for about 80% of the harms.”

Autoimmune Diseases of All Kinds Are To Be Expected

As explained by Cole in the interview, there’s a reason there’s never been a successful mRNA gene therapy product brought to market, despite 20 years of research effort. The persistence of synthetic mRNA with pseudouridine always caused too many problems in the animal trials to move into human trials. It caused autoimmune disease. It caused mutations. The manufacturers don’t even know if the nanolipid used to protect the mRNA is safe in humans.

“Based on the animal trials, we know there were problems and we can only predict that that’s going to happen in humanity. I want to be wrong, but from a basic immunology point of view, I don’t think I am,” Cole says.

“The nanolipid particles vary in size, interestingly. I’ve looked at some under the microscope. Some of them congeal and some of them stay tiny. But because of the fatty nature of them, they will carry their little mRNA and fractionated mRNA package to any cell in the body. And that’s the biggest concern. Now it has turned any cell in your body to a potential target [for your immune system].

An important paper came out in the European Journal of Immunology just about a month ago by Dr. Hagemann. There’s a condition called antibody dependent cellular cytotoxicity. What that means is that [the mRNA] sequence gets into your cell [and] that cell now becomes the spike factory.

That spike is on the surface of your cell. Now your NK cells that I talked about earlier say, ‘We better blow that cell up.’ So now, because there’s that spike on the surface, your immune system will destroy your own cells. This is another one of the detrimental effects.”

Pipeline Now Filled With Risky mRNA Shots

Making matters worse, even though the COVID shots have been shown to be a complete disaster, the drug industry is already working on dozens of different mRNA “vaccines,” thinking they now have carte blanche to put out whatever they want using this platform.

And the reason for this continued insanity is because our health and regulatory authorities are corrupted to the core. They are completely dishonest. They’re covering up the shocking harms, and unless something radically changes, they will allow dozens of equally dangerous mRNA gene transfer injections to be put out.

Reactivation of Latent Viruses

The COVID jabs also downregulate pattern receptors in your body called toll-like receptors. Specifically, toll-like receptors 7 and 8 are downregulated by the mRNA and pseudouridine in these shots. What does that do? It allows latent viruses to flourish that would otherwise have been kept in check.

“We’ve seen a big uptick in herpes family viruses, especially herpes EBV4, which is Epstein-Barr virus [aka] mononucleosis,” Cole says. So, for those with post-COVID or post-jab fatigue, long-COVID and those with MS-like symptoms, he recommends checking for Epstein-Barr.

About 80% of MS patients have high Epstein-Barr titers. “You will find that a lot of these individuals will have reactivated mono,” he says. For reactivated mono, methylene blue, HBOT and nebulized peroxide would all be indicated.

Fertility Under Attack

In the interview, Cole also reviews the potential impacts of the COVID jabs on the reproductive system. Menstrual dysregulation appears extremely common, as is the inability to become pregnant, despite trying for months, and spontaneous abortions are off the charts. The DMED database also showed a strong signal for fetal malformation before it was frozen and altered.

“What we’re doing to society and humanity with a previously never before used modality and product is causing horrendous harm to the human race, with no regard for science, with no regard for scientific integrity. It’s a machine gone amuck,” Cole says.

“There are darker forces behind it. A lot of people are making billions, but they’re killing people to do it. And it’s just so unethical what we’re experiencing societally. Yes, we’re causing infertility. Yes, we’re causing mutations in cancers. Yes, we’re causing heart attacks and strokes. Yes, we’re destroying the longevity of a younger generation. It is horrendous.

There’s no justification for any doctor who can look themselves in the mirror and say, ‘I feel comfortable giving this experimental product to my patients all day long.’ They need to reflect and realize they’ve lost their mind, [their] critical thinking skills.”

More Information

Sadly, almost everyone who’s credible and trustworthy has been censored and deplatformed at this point, so finding them can be a challenge. To follow Cole’s work, be sure to bookmark his website, RColeMD.com. You can also find him on the GlobalCovidSummit.org forum.

If you are vaccine injured, the Global COVID Summit has a blockchain-based forum where you can share your experience and it will never be taken down. You can’t be censored or deplatformed. Cole is available to answer questions in that forum.

They’re also starting up another website to compete with WebMD and similar pharma-run medical sites. It will eventually be available on DMED.com, which stands for “decentralized medicine.” This site is not yet live, but you can try it later. Cole will have a page there as well.

Other thought leaders worth tracking down and following include Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Pierre Kory, Dr. Paul Marik, Dr. Richard Urso, Dr. Paul Alexander, and Dr. Kirk A. Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist, and his wife, Dr. Kim Milhoan, just to name a few.

“These have been wonderful leaders in this movement for truth and sharing science,” Cole says. “All of us are part of the Global COVID Summit. We are 17,000 doctors strong and it’s very important that people understand that.

I mean, that’s more doctors than they have at the CDC or the FDA or the NIH. This is a group of critical thinking people standing up for your health, your freedom and your right to your own bodily autonomy.

I think, going forward, as people are starting to wake up and part of this narrative is cracking, let’s come back together, let’s communicate, let’s be kind, let’s help each other get back to a more loving, peaceful, communicative society. I think if we can forgive — obviously, there are things we don’t want to forget, because we don’t want this to happen again — but try to forgive people and try to help people ‘come to’ again.

Just come back together in community. I think it’s important that we really try to circle the wagons again as humanity, and hopefully come back to our senses. That’s a hopeful message I would like to share.”