We Need You to Care Local QC Hospital Health Official Vaccination Appeal Dec 2021

Critical thinking and journalistic curiosity were woefully missing in the most recent COVID-19 press briefing hosted by county health workers and local hospital medical directors.

On December 15, 2021, the Scott County, Iowa and Rock Island County, Illinois heath departments co-hosted a virtual press briefing that featured comments from the chief medical officers from the two Quad Cities' hospital systems: Genesis and Unity Point.

The driving theme was that local hospitals are in crisis because not enough Quad Citizens have been vaccinated. The unvaccinated were filling up the beds because they had COVID-19 and keeping non-COVID related cases from accessing their own critical life-saving health care.

Hours after the presser, the Quad Cities Chamber dispatched an email reinforcing the severity of this current purportedly avoidable crisis. “As we enter into this holiday season, COVID hospitalization rates are increasing rapidly and straining our regional medical providers. More than 85 percent of the COVID patients in our hospitals are unvaccinated.”

In smart messaging fashion, an advertising campaign was launched at the same time with the theme “We need you to care,” featuring signatures of the CEOs and medical directors from Genesis, Unity Point, and Community Health Care, as well as county health department officials. It reads in part, “We need you to GET VACCINATED. Almost all of our COVID-19 in-patients are unvaccinated.” The implication with this coordinated marketing campaign is that people are filling up our hospitals because they are unvaccinated and all must get vaccinated if we are to avoid disaster in our critical health care facilities.

To the Scott County Health Department's credit, they have memorialized each press briefing they've hosted virtually and posted said videos at the county's Web site, which are accessible if you look for them. There are more than 30 videos of these virtual press briefings posted for the past two years.

What's missing at the county Web site is the media-ready, purportedly internally approved, written comments and statements that the press briefing established. This messaging is usually sent out by the Rock Island County health department staff to dozens of stakeholders in the region, including media. The semi-publicly issued statements after each presser are the aggregated prepared comments that each scheduled speaker stated into the Zoom camera. If anything, this coalition is structurally disciplined.

During these “press briefings,” questions from the media (or anyone in virtual attendance) are funneled through the chat window and one of the virtual hosts of the meeting reads them aloud to the health spokespeople in attendance, be they a county or hospital medical director. The responses are typically void of full context and more often than not beget a follow up question for clarification.

I asked numerous questions during the December 15 presser and only one was responded to. [Correction to prnted edition: The question I asked during the Dec 15 presser was for clarifying how officials are defining "unvaccincated" and it was only partially answered.  The questions asked in the chat room are pasted in below for the online version of this piece. I asked numerous follow up questions via e-mail afterwards.]  The virtual call was scheduled for an hour, but at the 25-minute mark the organizer claimed they were out of time and had to go. If these were the most dire straights our hospitals were in, shouldn't we take up all the time that is needed to answer questions from the media in attendance?

Questions in the December 15, 2021 Presser Chat to Everyone

from Barnes, Brooke to Everyone: 10:38 AM: Please share any questions here. We will do our best to get to all questions in the limited time we have today. Thank you.

from Michelle O'Neill, WVIK News to Everyone: 10:40 AM: What are the hospitals and public health departments doing to reach people who have not been vaccinated? Are you trying to identify who the unvaccinated are and exploring how to reach them and influence them to get vaccinated?

from Jonathan Turner to Everyone: 10:42 AM: What is the impact of omicron locally?

from Marci to Everyone: 10:42 AM: At what point will elective procedures/surgeries be paused to manage the high number of covid patients?

from Jenny Hipskind WQAD to Everyone: 10:43 AM: -Amy and Nita- A recent poll shows only about 50% of senior citizens have gotten their booster shot so far. What are we seeing on the county levels? What would you say to encourage folks to get their boosters?

from Todd McGreevy to Everyone: 10:44 AM: Can the Genesis and Trinity spokesmen please let us know what their respective definitions for each health system are for "unvaccinated"? e.g. one jab, two jabs... got jabbed but was less than two weeks since getting jabbed, etc. Thank you.

from Jenny Hipskind WQAD to Everyone: 10:44 AM: For Dr. Andersen- today marks the one year anniversary of Genesis giving its first round of vaccinations to its healthcare workers. Can you reflect on the past year since that point? Are you happy with compliance of employees getting the shot?

from whbf to Everyone: 10:46 AM: How much of a game changer would pfizer's pill be if it were to be officially approved to be used and brought to hospitals in the QC?

from whbf to Everyone: 10:47 AM: Obviously breakthrough cases are continuing to happen -- can you say why people should still get vaccinated/ boosted even if they could still get COVID?

from Barnes, Brooke to Everyone: 10:51 AM: Thank you - we will have to end the questions here.

from Todd McGreevy to Everyone: 10:51 AM: Please address the timing factor... is someone who has been jabbed in less than 14 days of being admitted being counted as "unvaccinated"?

from Michelle O'Neill, WVIK News to Everyone: 10:52 AM: Thank you!

from Katz to Everyone: 10:52 AM: Breakthrough infection in the vaccinated is expected. The point is that vaccination greatly reduces the risk of severe illness, hospitalization, ICU care, mechanical ventilation and death when breakthrough occurs

from Barnes, Brooke to Everyone: 10:52 AM: Todd & Jenny, we will get back to you with your questoins due to time limits. Thank you!

To the county health departments' credit, they followed up with me by e-mail and eventually stated they could not answer my numerous follow up questions and directed us to the public relations personnel at Genesis and Unity Point. I was told by Genesis that they had answered my questions in previous pressers, but they declined to state which dates, stating they would let me know when they had their next presser.

In the six weeks since the last presser, a lot of information has come out in the independent media on how unvaccinated are documented in health systems. The devil's in the details, and how our local hospitals and county health officials conduct themselves relative to our local media inquiries has a major impact on how the Quad Cities populace perceives our collective and individual health status.

For two years, the Reader has encouraged open communication with our area public health departments and health-care providers, believing transparency is the best way to address concerns, abate confusion, and empower the public to make informed decisions collaboratively with all health-care providers. We will publish at our Web site all written answers received from Genesis and Unity Point to the following questions.

Big-Picture Metrics

What percentage of your current in-patient admissions do you consider and publicize as “unvaccinated”?

How many ICU beds did the Quad Cities' based facilities in your health system have available as of February 2020? How many ICU beds are currently available in those same facilities?

Is there a difference between a “critical care unit” and an “ICU unit”? Both terms are used frequently in press briefings.

How many staff did you employ at these same facilities as of February 2020? How many staff do you currently employ at those same facilities?

What percentage of your patients at your facilities who are counted as COVID-19 patients have COVID-19 as a secondary diagnosis? As of February 2, 2022, the Web site Coronavirus.iowa.gov/pages/hospital-data shows that, in Iowa, 45 percent of COVID-19 hospitalized patients are such as a secondary diagnosis.

How long are patients, who test positive but are asymptomatic, isolated as COVID-19 patients before they are released into general hospital care if they don't actually present with COVID-19 symptoms?

How many patients are in the hospital for COVID-19 only? How many of these patients are in ICU?

What is the age range of ICU patients with COVID-19? How many ICU patients have additional comorbidities that are considered contributory to their condition?

Further Defining “Unvaccinated”

Originally, when COVID-19 mRNA inoculations were introduced, one jab was considered fully vaccinated. As the inoculations' protection waned, a second dose was needed, after which a person qualified as fully vaccinated. Now comes a booster and that additional jab is necessary to meet the definition of fully vaccinated.

The CDC has also attached an additional 14 day “grace period” after each person's injection date before his/her fully vaccinated classification is official. If a person is injected on January 1, he/she will not be considered fully vaccinated until January 15. This is true for every injection whether the first, second, or booster.

In your most recently publicized COVID-19 patient counts, what percentage of patients are in their grace periods, and still being recorded as unvaccinated?

Why aren't the numbers of unvaccinated COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths exaggerated if technically fully vaccinated people still in their grace periods are included in the unvaccinated group?

If a person has an adverse event during the grace period, what is the protocol for reporting and treating this reaction if he/she is officially still considered unvaccinated? Is the adverse event still eligible and required to be reported by law, to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)?

When an admitted COVID-19 patient clears the grace period (on day 15 from the injection date), when does the hospital update the admission record and change his/her vaccination status to “vaccinated”?

If a person is admitted to the hospital, but did not get their injection(s) at your facility or within your provider system, and/or does not have their vaccination documentation, is that patient's vaccination status recorded as “unknown”? And are these “unknowns” also counted as “unvaccinated”?

If, during an admission, the patient claims he/she is fully vaccinated but does not have vaccination documentation, how is this patient's vaccination status verified and classified?

If an unvaccinated patient is admitted without a medical directive, does your hospital administer a COVID-19 vaccination as part of its standard care? In other words, are there any circumstances for which unvaccinated admissions can be given jabs without first giving their express informed consent based on hospital standard care?

Testing and Protocols

Are all hospital admissions tested for COVID-19 if (a) fully vaccinated whether asymptomatic or symptomatic or (b) unvaccinated whether asymptomatic or symptomatic?

As of January 1, 2022, PCR tests with cycle thresholds routinely higher than 35 cycles were discontinued as unreliable due to excessive false positives, therefore no longer authorized for diagnosing a COVID-19 case.

Has your hospital discontinued using PCR tests?

Specifically, what test(s) is your hospital utilizing to diagnose COVID-19?

Are the new tests also PCR or other molecular testing, and/or antigen tests?

Does the new COVID-19 testing distinguish between variants (e.g. Delta or omicron) without additional specific sequencing? How many individual test results are routinely submitted for sequencing for confirmation of diagnoses?

Health-Care Staffing

It is currently being reported that hospital resources are stressed, nearing capacity, and jeopardizing care. How much of your increased stress is the result of terminating health-care workers who declined to be inoculated, causing staffing shortages that forced a reallocation/reduction of available resources rather than solely the fault of increased numbers of unvaccinated patients admitted due to COVID-19?

What percentage of your health-care staff are COVID-19-recovered and have acquired natural immunity as a result?

These same workers, who consistently faced frightening risks from infected patients when COVID-19 initially appeared and was perceived as a dangerous contagion, bravely persevered for two years in the thick of the pandemic for all our sakes.

What possible justification does your hospital administration claim for violating employees' protected rights, terminating them because they refuse to absorb any more personal risk from experimental injections, especially considering the jabs are emergency use authorized (EUA) with inadequate long-term safety and efficacy data?

Vaccination vs Early Treatment

Why does your health-care system support the mass distribution of experimental mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 that are EUA based on only six months of clinical trial data – whose 500,000 pages of raw data the FDA and Pfizer are refusing to release to the public and research community – yet reject early treatments using off-label FDA approved drugs such as antivirals ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, a best practices otherwise embraced by the health-care industry and regulators, especially when these inexpensive, accessible drugs are prescribed as part of multiple drug protocols that include steroids, anticoagulants, antibiotics, vitamins, inhalers/nebulizers, all from a pharmacopeia that is consistently demonstrating impressive efficacy worldwide in the early treatment of COVID-19?

What is the downside of medically intervening early to prevent hospitalization and possible death, especially as the new experimental mRNA inoculations are proving largely ineffective in providing durable protection from getting or transmitting COVID-19 disease through time?

What is the rationale – beyond CDC's singular recommendation for mRNA experimental inoculations in treating COVID-19 – for rejecting outpatient early-treatment protocols for onset COVID-19 patients, while exclusively endorsing inpatient treatment once patients present with severe disease, using a limited protocol of drugs and intubation that has an unimpressive 50-percent chance of success?

Primary Care, Remdesivir, and Ventilators

Is a newly admitted patient's primary care doctor's directives subordinate to your staff? If you do not follow the patient's primary care doctor's wishes, what is your rationale for this protocol?

Why are ICU patients, who are admitted as COVID-19 patients due to a positive test result, isolated from loved ones and advocates if they are (a) advanced enough in symptomatic COVID-19 disease to be hospitalized, but no longer SARS-CoV-2 replicant-competent and incapable of transmitting disease, or (b) are admitted for medical reasons other than COVID-19 and test positive for COVID-19 but are asymptomatic and not infectious?

There is an uncomfortable skepticism relative to the bonus reimbursements from Medicare/Medicaid for COVID-19 inpatients. These higher reimbursements per COVID-19 patients are considered by some to be perverse incentives, especially as they relate to one such bonus reimbursement – for prescribing remdesivir. What is the dollar amount your hospital receives per patient for administering remdesivir to a patient?

Why is the expensive antiviral remdesivir exclusively approved by the FDA to treat inpatient COVID-19, especially knowing its predictable damage to kidneys?

How many patients are currently ventilated? What is the average number of ventilated patients per month? Are ventilated patients receiving nutritional support?

What is the survival rate for patients placed on ventilators at your hospital? Some reports claim 80 percent of intubated patients die, and if they do survive, have damage to their lungs from the ventilator, yet it is the standard care regardless. Is this a failure of innovation by the health-care community, relying instead on mRNA vaccination protection that quickly wanes and does not prevent illness or transmission?

One year later, after the release of the first, second, and booster rounds of experimental injections, and allowing ourselves to become the trials, research worldwide is concluding that these jabs are not delivering what was hoped for. The mRNA inoculations do not maintain their level of protection against disease, falling short of the required 50 percent efficacy requirement for EUA in fewer than six weeks from injection, and do not prevent hospitalization or death even after the third jab compared to COVID-19-recovered people, including the majority of health-care workers who have been terminated for refusing COVID-19 inoculations knowing they already possess superior immunity and are no risk to patients or anyone else.

One More Time: Why Should Kids Get Vaccinated?

After two years, no one but the FDA and manufacturers of the mRNA experimental injections are privy to the granular data from their clinical trials, which should raise concerns in the health-care industry, especially as the cohorts approved for the experimental jabs are younger and younger. Without the raw data, we are not able to confidently assess risk for the different cohorts. Prior to mRNA inoculations, risk/benefit calculations for all the different cohorts were an integral part of vaccine approval and distribution. Instead, surveillance, data collection, and research efforts have been anemic relative to the mRNA experimental gene therapies and do not support the fast-tracked recommendations for multiple injections for most of the cohorts, but most emphatically not for our children.

There is zero justification for jabbing children, and this irresponsible cruelty needs to end immediately. Children are at zero risk from COVID-19, therefore zero benefit can be gained from jabbing them. No amount of Common Core math changes the calculation zero risk equals zero benefit. Never mind the unknowable future risk to their health from adverse events that may not manifest until much later. That risk alone should cause every parent and provider to remove children from the mass vaccine distribution agenda that is presenting less and less about health.

The FAQ page on Unity Point's Web site “How do I know the vaccine is safe for my child” has two paragraphs for children 5-11 years old. The first paragraph states, “more than 3,000 5-11-year-olds were enrolled in the vaccine clinical trials. With continuous monitoring and millions of doses administrated to adults over the past year, the vaccines have proven to be very safe.” There have been common, minor short-term side effects but nothing long-term has been identified. Common side effects (fever, fatigue, headache, etc) were shown to be lower in individuals 5-11 than those ages 12 and older. In addition, there was not a single serious side effect noted in the Pfizer trial.”

There are 28 million U.S. children, so a trial of 3,000 children (for which the raw data has not been released) is a very low-powered study considering the stakes. Making the claim that “no long-term side effects have been identified” is arguably misleading when there are no long-term safety studies for this age cohort, or any other cohorts because this experimental injection is brand-new in the market, and children 5-11 are just beginning to receive them. What specific data are you using to make such a definitive claim of safety, both short and long-term, for this cohort?

At Genesis' Web site on COVID-19, the information for children 5-11 includes the FDA's ACIP review slide stack with comparative information to other viruses. The suggestion is that more children in this cohort have been hospitalized and/or died from COVID-19 related illnesses compared to the other viruses but, unlike the other viruses' total numbers that are sourced, there is no source cited for the COVID-19 totals.

A comprehensive analysis of death certificates and hospital records of all U.S. children with COVID-19-related conditions in this time period confirmed that every child (approximately 350) had at least one serious comorbidity (e.g. lukemia) as the primary cause of hospitalization and death. COVID-19 was not the primary cause of any deaths of children. The ACIP slide stack is unpersuasive regarding safety and efficacy in the 5-11 cohort, including antibodies detection after vaccination that could also indicate previous exposure and mild SARS-CoV-2 infection of children.

One of the three EUA standards for approval is that benefits exceed the risks. Where children ages 0-19 are concerned, with even greater emphasis on children 0-12, statistical zero risk from COVID-19 exists for them. Why is the medical community fast-tracking inoculating children at all when there is greater risk from the injections, such as myocarditis, than from COVID-19?

Is this fast-tracking because once these mRNA vaccinations are officially licensed for younger-age cohorts and placed on the children's vaccine schedule, the vaccine companies automatically become immune from any financial liability arising from harm from those protected vaccines, including indemnification for harm to adults as part of the 1986 Act governing vaccines?

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