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In a November 1, 2021, Newsweek article, Martin Kulldorff, epidemiologist and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Jay Bhaacharya, professor of health policy at Stanford Medical School, question the approach taken by our nation's leaders to the pandemic. e experts point to natural immunity being largely ignored, collateral health damage such as untreated mental illness and missed screenings for other afflictions due to long-term shutdowns, and the "devastating effects of school closures," when Sweden kept daycare and schools open with "Zero COVID deaths in children and a COVID risk to teachers lower than the average of other professions." ey also cite a study from Israel in which "the vaccinated were 27 times more likely to get symptomatic COVID than the unvaccinated who had recovered from a prior infection." Kulldorff and Bhaacharya recommend vaccination of older people but not children, students, or most healthy adults, whom they consider low risk. "ere is a 1,000-fold difference in mortality risk between the old and young," they say. In a lengthy video, former Pfizer vice president and chief scientist, Dr. Michael Yeadon, argues against lockdowns for healthy people, mass testing, the concept of asymptomatic disease transmission, inappropriate labeling of causes of death by COVID, faulty PCR tests, censorship of alternative viewpoints to the official government narrative, vaccine mandates, masks, and vaccine passports. He agrees that COVID-19 is slightly riskier to the elderly and infirmed than the common flu, but says, "If you're younger than 70 and you don't have prior illnesses, it's less of a risk to your health than is influenza." "ere are multiple therapeutic drugs that are at least as effective as vaccines are," Yeadon says. "ey're already available and cheap. So, inhaled corticosteroids that are used in asthma reduce symptomatology by 90 percent… An off-patent drug called ivermectin (it's one of the most widely used drugs in the world) is also able to reduce symptoms at any stage of the disease by 90 percent." Yeadon stresses the role of T cells, contending that antibodies are not the only consideration in immunity. "ere are multiple arms of your immune system," he states. Variants of the early COVID-19 virus, according to Yeadon, are not different enough to be a significant threat to most people. "Most don't need a vaccine at all. Especially one with a blood clot risk." Dr. Harvey Risch, Yale epidemiologist, provided perspective in December, just as omicron was spreading exponentially. "ere is conflicting evidence about the infectivity of omicron, but appreciable increasing evidence that omicron generally produces only asymptomatic or mild disease. Out of caution, I would suggest that people with chronic conditions like diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular or kidney disease, etc., should still take care about seeking early treatment if they get infected. Most people will likely not know that they have had omicron, will discover it incidentally by COVID testing for screening purposes, or will have cold-like illnesses from it. e existing vaccines and boosters do not appear to stop omicron from spreading," he said. "Remember, what maers is hospitalizations, long COVID, and deaths. ese are what should be followed to understand our risks. Case counts per se do not maer, except to show how much population immunity has been developing. It is hard for people to understand that in a pandemic, what will end it is high population natural immunity. We get there by allowing it to happen safely—by a mild illness if omicron turns out that way as it seems, or early outpatient treatment as needed for high-risk people." From Harvard and Stanford Warning from Former Big Pharma VP A Positive Prognosis on Omicron 72 | SIGNATURE MONTANA Denise Czuprynski has been writing and editing her full career in marketing and communications. She feels proud and blessed to call Cascade, Montana her home. S MT

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