Chapter 47 “so what did we learn from all these plagues? : Big Pharma and conventional medicine take it on the chin”

So many casualties. Beyond all belief.

Initially when COVID-19 swept right on in in 2020 there was a certainty that a vaccine was on its way. Regular encouraging announcements came from Big Pharma, the politicos and medicos that a vaccine was on its way on a heavily fast tracked and mega funded superhighway of optimism. Despite securities legislation in the developed world prohibiting insider trading Big Pharma executives skimmed off big sums of money prior to their company’s brimming with hope announcements. Many were caught but many escaped with bulging pockets full of cash. This slammed their reputation as an industry. Billions in government money went their way that supposedly funded research but much of it went to performance and incentive payments to Big Pharma’s senior management teams not for developing a vaccine but due to their “entrepreneurial skills” in snagging funding!

Yes they did finally develop a vaccine for the COVIDs but only after it had mutated was the efficacy of the great vaccine made appare and it failed to deliver a vaccine for Virus # 26. Perhaps somewhat undeservedly all Big Pharma was categorized by whomever survived as parasitical scumbags. If you thought Big Pharma took it on the chin for thalidomide and DES it was nothing compared to the near universal shaming they got blasted with for failing to deliver a magic bullet for the OVIDs and Virus # 26. Finally the survivors believed the alternative medicine community and “conspiracy theorists” (those who challenged conventional medicine) who had been telling anyone who cared to listen to them that Big Pharma made its huge profits by making you continually ill so your conventional physician could “manage” your symptoms by prescribing more Big Pharma products. What Big Pharma lost Big Nutraceuticals gained. And the latter was subject to fraud, false advertising, impure products but if you did your research you would find  many honest supplement providers backed by double blind studies for their products and completely forthcoming with certificates of analysis for their products.

As for conventional medicine its practitioners also took it on the chin for failing to find a “cure” for Virus # 26. Due to the training they had many had their heads so far up the ass of Big Pharma they had lost their vision of healing and gained the skill of prescribing. Yes I will say these conventional practitioners were victims of their training so heavily financed by Big Pharma. Who brought the attention of the public to the unconventional immunity weapons to be used against Virus # 26? It was the functional medicine specialists that always looked to find the root cause of the symptoms and deal with those instead of the conventional practitioners who were trained to mask and manage the symptoms with pharmaceuticals. Not all the conventional practitioners were the bad guys as some actually hunted down the cause of the symptoms instead of doling out prescriptions like jellybeans. But they were in the minority.

As a cardiologist when I first commenced by career, I was one of those conventional practitioners happy to prescribe a magic bullet. But after several years of listening to my patients I heard a continuous litany of complaints about adverse reactions and intolerance to prescriptive medicines. I took a year sabbatical from my hospital position to go to Stanford University School of Medicine in California to become certified as a functional medicine specialist. I learned how to really listen to patients and spend time with them to try and determine their illness and what may be causing it. I learned about yoga, mindfulness, the crucial importance of diet to create optimal health and about the many supplements available to prevent some illnesses from arising.

Upon returning to my hospital practice I got somewhat of the reputation as a lotus land doctor. The old guard guffawed at my approach to medicine but I was overjoyed to see so many relieved and appreciative patients. The younger residents saw the success I was having with my patients and started to listen to what I had to say about, diet, sleep, mindfulness and yoga and soaked it up.

But despite my newfound medical approach there was nothing I could do to stop and kill the COVIDs and Virus # 26 in their tracks. It seemed like many other doctors we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. While you had a good chance to save someone infected with the COVIDs against Virus #26 you had no chance.